Each of us is born with a history already in place.
The narrator mentions this in context of his observation that one's birth and his surroundings play an important part in that person's life. In the context of narrator's life, he discovers through his experiences that the course of his life will be determined by factors that had played before he was born.
Life was not fair.
The narrator was given a task of writing lines for hitting another kid at school for making fun of his speech problem. The narrator wasn’t regretful or depressed because of the homework. He soon developed a quick fix by using a ruler to write the first ‘I’s in his lines, only to realize that the sentence would likely flow to the next line as well. The slight inconvenience made him think of life as unfair in his happy bubble.
So we decided to hang Richard
Richard Aisles was a neighbor of the narrator, who had developed eyesight problems after constantly staring at sun. The narrator’s acquaintances, particularly Johnny Lightbourne, suggests to beat up Richard as he was an easy target. But, then they read about a black man who had been lynched by hanging. This gave them a new idea to carry out their torture. This suggests the role of violence in adolescence.
The “me” who read the books, who followed the adventures, seemed more the real me than the “me” who played ball in the streets.
The narrator expresses his conflict as he discovers his love for books, but is ashamed of acknowledging for the fear of being labeled as feminine, or homosexual. This insight comes as a result of toxic masculinity he lives through in his surroundings.
Mama beat me with a stick
The narrator lied to his adoptive father that his step-mother beat him, to avoid saying that he had been hurt trying to hitch a ride on the back of a cab and had been dragged for a block after he fell off and his sleeve was caught. Due to this lie, his father screamed at his mother for hurting him so gravely. His mother forgave him eventually, but as he puts it, God’s revenge fell upon him when he sustained fractures in both his heels after jumping from a church roof.
