An American Marriage Literary Elements

Contemporary fiction

The 21st century American South, after Barack Obama's election.

The book is told in alternating first person point of view between Roy and Celestial

The book has a grim tone that follows the injustices that the characters experience.

The protagonists are Roy and Celestial, a young black married couple living in the American South. The antagonist is the American criminal justice system.

The major conflict is that Roy is wrongly accused of rape and imprisoned for 12 years because of racism in the criminal justice system, and his and Celestial's marriage falls apart as a result.

The climax occurs when Roy is released from prison and has to come to terms with the end of his and Celestial's marriage.

Early in the novel, Celestial makes Roy wear a condom during sex because she worries that he is cheating on her. This foreshadows the instability that exists in their marriage, and reflects how it will eventually fall apart.

Roy talks about how difficult it will be to spend twelve years in prison without Celestial and his family. However, any mention of this is inevitably an understatement, because no one can truly explain the pain of being imprisoned for over a decade.

The entire novel is an allusion to the many cases like Roy's, where innocent black men are convicted for crimes they didn't commit.

Roy writes about prison with vivid imagery, explaining how stifled he feels without being able to control where he goes and being in such close proximity to other people, while never having privacy.

“Gloria once told me that your best quality is also your worst.” This should be a paradoxical statement, but in reality, some people's best qualities can be their downfall if they are too extrreme.

At the beginning of the novel, Celestial is upset with Roy that he kept the secret of Big Roy not being his real father from her. This parallels the end of the novel, when Roy is upset that Celestial hid her growing feelings for Andre from him.

There are multiple references to what the justice system does unfairly to black men. In talking about the justice system, Jones refers to all of the individual cops and judges, not the institution of the criminal justice system as a whole.

"Her fingers transmitting a miserable willingness." Fingers cannot speak, so they cannot technically "transmit" anything.