Summary
Part III begins set in the present day. The first chapter follows Elwood during a hot summer day. New York’s garbage men are on strike and the streets smell of trash. Despite the uncomfortable inconvenience, Elwood sympathizes with the strikers, since he decides that any form of resistance—”sticking it to the man”—is good. Elwood remembers how he first moved to New York during another strike in 1968. His girlfriend, Denise, steps out to buy some ice. Elwood and Denise met while Elwood was finishing his GED. Denise taught ESL at the same high school where he was finishing his degree, having never had the opportunity to complete high school due to his time at Nickel Academy.
In a flashback, Elwood recalls how he asked Denise out after completing his diploma. At first she turned him down, saying that she was with someone, but a month later came back and asked him out to dinner. When Denise returns from her errand, she gives Elwood a back massage; Elwood works as a mover and is sore from lifting heavy objects. The couple watches a movie, has sex, and goes to bed, with Elwood thinking of the moving van he plans on buying tomorrow in order to start his own independent moving company. He plans on calling the company “Ace Moving.” Six months later, he realizes that he picked the name out because of the connection it has for him to Nickel Academy.
Chapter 12 begins with a rundown of the four ways a boy could get out of Nickel Academy. First, he could finish out his sentence, which was typically from six months to two years long. If the boy managed to bargain, he could find a way to shorten the time he spent there. Second, the court could intervene. This outcome was only possible if the boy’s family still had some money to pay a lawyer, or if a relative was available to push the court towards intervention. The third outcome was death, either directly “intentional” (if a boy was killed by a member of the administration), or “accidental,” by malnutrition, negligence, or poor health as a result of the school’s maltreatment.
The fourth way for a boy to escape Nickel—and the rarest method—would be for a boy to run away. Running away is very dangerous and boys who succeed often “vanish,” taking on different names and keeping silent for fear of discovery. Boys who fail are taken to the Ice Cream Factory, beaten, and imprisoned for weeks as a punishment. One boy who tried to get out of Nickel named Clayton Smith managed to hitchhike out for four days, only to be picked up by a member of the Nickel school board, Mr. Simmons. Mr. Simmons took him back to Nickel, where Clayton was punished severely and taken to the Ice Cream Factory in the middle of the night.
The narrative returns to focusing on Elwood’s time at Nickel Academy. Elwood’s grandmother Harriet comes to visit him. She tells him that she has bad news: their lawyer, a “nice, polite white” man, skipped town and stole two hundred dollars from Harriet—thus taking away any chance of Elwood getting out of Nickel Academy through legal intervention. Elwood decides that there is a fifth way out of Nickel Academy: “getting rid” of Nickel Academy itself.
The narration pivots back to the present day, although some time later than the previous section. Elwood is watching the New York Marathon. While there, he runs into an old acquaintance from Nickel Academy: Chickie Pete. Chickie Pete and Elwood go to a bar to catch up; Elwood reminisces about Chickie Pete’s former trumpet-playing talent. Chickie Pete tells Elwood that he doesn’t play anymore, since his fingers are incapacitated by muscle cramping due to alcohol detox. Elwood feels awkward finding out that Chickie Pete is sober, since they are sitting in a bar. Chickie tells Elwood about his time in the military after graduating from Nickel. When Chickie Pete asks him about his own life, Elwood lies about his success in order to avoid making Chickie feel bad. Elwood is surprised to hear that Chickie does not remember how Elwood escaped Nickel Academy. Elwood had assumed that his escape became legend, but Chickie appears oblivious.
The narrative returns to the past; Nickel Academy is preparing to undergo a state inspection. The boys’ work schedule is interrupted as the administrators clean the school and make it presentable for the inspection. Elwood shows Turner a record of all of the deliveries they’ve made during Community Service—proof of the school’s corruption. His plan to bring down the school has yet to succeed, as an editorial he sent to The Chicago Defender and another letter have been ignored by the newspaper. Elwood plans on giving the list to the inspectors when they come in order to expose Nickel Academy’s corrupt practices.
Turner begins to distance himself from Elwood after Elwood tells him his plan. However, when the opportunity presents itself, Turner offers Elwood help and tells him that he will slip the letter into the inspector’s pockets. Turner manages to sneak the letter to one of the inspectors by folding it into a newspaper and giving the newspaper to the inspector. That night, Elwood is woken up by flashlights and men coming to take him to the White House.
Chapter Fifteen returns to the present day: Elwood waiting for his wife, Millie, for their date night. His moving company, Ace, is a great success, but Elwood wants to avoid any extra attention that his success may garner. He considers the gentrification happening around his neighborhood, which he calls reverse “white flight,” before debating whether to buy Millie flowers. However, before he is able to go and do so, she arrives.
In Chapter Sixteen, the narrative focuses once again on the past: Superintendent Spencer found out about the letter that Elwood and Turner slipped the inspector. Although he doesn’t know whether the letter caused any damage, he punishes Elwood by having Hennepin beat him and placing Elwood in solitary confinement. Elwood spends three weeks in solitary. While there, he spends his time thinking about Martin Luther King Jr. and realizing how alone he is in the world, coming to think of himself as an orphan for the first time in his life since nobody can come save him while he is at Nickel.
Turner sneaks into Elwood’s cell and tells him that Spencer and Hennepin plan to take him “out back,” implying that the men plan to kill Elwood. Turner tells Elwood that they have to try and escape Nickel. The boys begin to run, making it far by foot and then by bike before a Nickel van approaches them. Harper and Hennepin emerge from the van holding guns. As Elwood and Turner run away, Elwood is shot dead. Turner continues to run and manages to escape.
The epilogue begins in the third-person voice, but from Turner’s point of view. It is revealed that when running away, when Turner finally stopped at a diner, he instinctually used the name “Elwood Curtis” when the owner asked him who he was. After that moment, he took on Elwood’s identity to “honor his friend” and “live for him.” A few years later, Turner returned to Florida, obtained Elwood’s birth certificate, and was able to complete forging his identity by filing for a Social Security number using Elwood’s name and identity.
Millie comes home and brings Turner an article published about Nickel. Turner confesses and tells Millie everything about his time at Nickel and about forging his identity to become Elwood Curtis. Turner goes onto the website that is being used to publicize the archaeological digs and investigation into Elwood. He sees that only white men are speaking out about their experience at Nickel and decides that it is time someone “spoke for the black boys.” Turner travels to Tallahassee, determined to give Elwood a proper burial and vowing to speak out about the horrors he—and others—experienced at Nickel Academy.
Analysis
The novel’s ending reveals the “twist” that is central to its plot: the man that the reader has gotten to know as Elwood is actually Turner. Elwood is dead; as they attempted to escape Nickel Academy, he was shot, which allowed Turner to adopt Elwood’s identity and live under Elwood’s name. Over the course of the novel, Elwood and Turner are presented as character foils for each other: characters that contrast each other, revealing qualities that may not be explicitly obvious to the reader unless they are able to compare the character to someone else. However, the ending of the novel subverts the literary technique of character foils. Rather than continuing to be double, Turner and Elwood metaphorically merged into a single character when Turner took on Elwood’s identity.
Although Turner adopted Elwood’s identity, it is only at the end that he decides to take on more than Elwood’s name. When he makes the journey to Tallahassee, he does so out of a feeling of responsibility. Finally, after ignoring the memories of Nickel Academy for years and lying about who he is, he tells Millie about his past and confronts it. This confrontation, which forces him to remember all of the horrors that he and Elwood experienced at Nickel, also pushes Turner to realize that he wants to seek out justice. He wants to finally give Elwood a proper burial and honor the memory of his friend rather than ignore it. Giving Elwood a burial is a highly symbolic act; for Turner, burying Elwood also means burying his attitude of avoiding the past. A burial forces Turner to acknowledge that Elwood is dead and that his death came at the hands of Nickel Academy.
Turner’s turn towards a desire for justice at the end of the novel is not the first time that he seeks justice, despite his overall cynical attitude that often contrasts Elwood’s. When Elwood wanted to deliver the letter to the inspectors, it was Turner who actually executed the delivery, even though at first he was skeptical and even ignored Elwood after Elwood initially told him about the plan. However, the letter resulted in Elwood’s death, since he was put into solitary because of the letter, which then led to the boy’s failed escape plan where Elwood was killed. Turner’s decision to seek justice by delivering the letter led, in a roundabout way, to Elwood’s death. Although he never states it explicitly, Turner’s decision to live life ignoring the past appears to be connected to this seeming “consequence” that his only act of justice-seeking caused. When he tried to take an active stance against injustice, his best friend was killed.
Despite his attempts to ignore the past, the flash-forward sections of the narrative show Turner’s inability to fully escape the past. Reminders of Nickel Academy resurface continuously, whether Turner wants them or not. When he starts his moving company, he subconsciously chooses a name that is related to Nickel Academy—“Ace,” a moniker that was used often at the school. On the streets, he meets old Nickel students like Chickie Pete, all of whom also show Turner (and the reader) the devastating effects that the school had on its former students. Chickie Pete struggles with crippling alcoholism, which is ironically highlighted when he agrees to go to a bar with Turner. Turner is one of the few former students who managed not only to physically escape, but also to build a life for himself.
However, even Turner is not able to fully escape the memories of Nickel Academy, despite his intense efforts to totally erase the past from his life. While he has a successful moving company and happy marriage by the end of the novel, there are many details scattered throughout the “flash-forward” sections that hint at Turner’s continuous struggle with the trauma he faced at Nickel Academy. His relationship with Denise—a girlfriend who is mentioned in one of the flash-forward sections—falls apart, a fact that Turner mentions is his fault. When he tells Millie about his past, the narrative shifts to her perspective for a few paragraphs (also in the third-person voice) as she realizes that the nightmares, sudden reactions, and fits of panic of Turner (who she knows as Elwood) are all a result of his traumatic past. The narrative shift to Millie allows the reader to gain an external viewpoint for a second, illuminating just how intensely trauma permeates Turner’s life to this day.
