Summary
The prologue begins with the discovery of a secret graveyard on the campus of Nickel Academy, a reform school in Florida. The graveyard, located on a patch of field that had previously served as a pasture for the now-defunct school’s cattle and dairy business, was revealed to contain bodies after a real estate company had attempted to develop the land. The discovery halted the real estate development, forcing the company to wait until the “whole damned place” could be “neatly erased from history.”
The narrator explains that a young girl, Jody, was the first one to draw attention to the site of the graves after she noticed that the land seemed to look “wrong.” With Jody’s help, a team of archaeology students begin to excavate the site, discovering bones, belt buckles, and soda bottles, decades after the first body had been dumped into the site. The narrator clarifies that the Nickel Boys—the boys who attended Nickel Academy—referred to the cemetery as “Boot Hill,” a name that has stuck around to this day.
As the archaeology students continue their dig, they paint white “X’s” on the graves, along with the names of bodies that they can identify, although they are only able to place two-thirds of the bodies. Identifying the bodies has become a competition for the young students. Seven of the total of forty-three bodies are able to be tracked down using DNA matches.
The narrator details how Jody first discovered the boys’ bodies, initially mistaking the bones for a small animal before following a hunch that the irregularities at Boot Hill hid something more sinister. After the discovery, one of the Nickel Boys, or perhaps a relative, tipped off the media and the gravesite received a flurry of attention, which all led to the boys. The narrator mentions that although the Boys had talked about the graveyard before in public, nobody had paid attention until it was an outsider who “said it” or brought the graveyard into the public eye. The story of the graveyard became national news; by that time, Nickel had been closed for three years. The coverage, the narrator states, all had an aura of foreboding and was “unsettling,” with shadows creeping into the corners of video footage or marks on walls looking like dried blood.
The narrator goes on to explain how many Nickel Boys there are. They have attempted to organize reunions, and are “cheaper than a dime-a-dance.” At their reunions, they attempted to review and understand their trauma together, away from media or public attention, and hoping to create a form of shared memory. One of the Nickel Boys, Big John Hardy, even ran a website where the Boys shared petitions for government investigations of the school and their own stories from Nickel Academy. The narrator states that this was one of the ways the Boys could explain “where [they] were made.”
The narrator also explains the Boys’ tradition of hosting an annual reunion, which he describes as “strange and necessary.” At the reunion, the Boys—who have either barely managed to “scrape” together a life, or never managed to fit into normal society at all—meet in a hotel and then go on a walk through Nickel’s campus. On the walk, some Boys do not go into all of the buildings on campus due to traumatic memories, and they avoid certain paths.
The prologue concludes by introducing Elwood Curtis, a Nickel Boy who now lives in New York. Although Curtis has spent the past years avoiding the memory and thought of Nickel Academy, citing the fact that he does not understand the purpose of a retrospective fixation on the school, after the remains have been excavated, he now feels a sense of duty to return to the school.
Analysis
The novel’s prologue introduces one of the book’s central themes and questions: how do we deal with trauma? How do we relate to memory? Nickel Academy is introduced to the reader as a relic of the past that is being excavated—an artifact that holds disturbing truths, deaths that have been silenced, bodies that can no longer be named due to the passage of time. Whitehead employs powerful descriptive language in order to conjure the sinister, dark atmosphere that surrounds Nickel Academy and Boot Hill, describing in detail the “cadaver-sniffing dogs” and “cratered skulls” that are present at the graveyard’s discovery. The reader is reminded of death and violence, forced to reckon with the skulls that have been “cratered” through physical force or time, which itself acts as a violent agent within the novel.
As much as the prologue reveals, it also leaves a majority of the questions it raises unanswered. The novel’s central character, Elwood Curtis, is introduced to the reader only in the final paragraph. Much of Nickel Academy’s dark past is alluded to; however, information is left intentionally obscure in order to create suspense. The novel’s first sentence is symbolic of its use of obscurity: “Even in death the boys were trouble,” states the narrator. The reader is immediately forced to ask what kind of trouble the boys are, why they are trouble, who the boys are, what caused their deaths, and a multitude of other questions that all arise from this single, seemingly simple introduction.
The prologue also establishes a difference between levels of knowledge. The boys, for example, are revealed to hold a large quantity of knowledge to which the reader, the narrator, and the rest of the world—Jody, the archaeology students, the media--are not privy. “All the boys knew about that rotten spot,” states the narrator, insinuating that the boys have known about the graveyard for years before it came to light after Jody’s investigation. These differences in knowledge create distinctions between sets of characters within the novel. For example, as the archaeology students engage in unearthing the past, the boys engage in the process of reliving it by walking through the school’s campus; one group attempts to navigate how to handle or live with what others are still in the process of discovering.
Another vital distinction that comes into play between the differing “groups” within the prologue is their voice. Who gets the privilege of being heard? Whose story is told? The Boys, despite having attempted to tell their story for years through the website and in other venues, were never heard. Instead, it is Jody who is able to bring the bodies to the attention of “the rest of the world.” The Nickel Boys have no voice, even when they attempt to use it. They are social outcasts, either unable to integrate themselves or somehow looked down upon, as the narrator states: “Nickel Boys were cheaper than a dime-a-dance,” implying that they are somehow of lesser quality and “cheap.” The Nickel Boys feel shame (although it still remains unclear where that shame stems from), which is why they must turn to the website established by Big John in order to offer an “explanation” and an “apology.”
As the Nickel Boys are othered from their own experience and from the rest of society, Elwood Curtis emerges as an outsider to their group. He refuses to interact with the Nickel Boys or engage in their communal attempt to process their trauma. Elwood’s attitude, in part, is reminiscent of a stereotypically masculine, patriarchal approach to emotions, wherein he looks down upon the “grown men” who take turns handing each other “Kleenex,” an example that exemplifies his disdain for displays of emotion among men. Instead, Elwood’s feelings towards the past spur the desire for revenge and violence.
However, when the bodies are discovered, Elwood experiences a turning point. He realizes that he has to return to the site of the bodies. He experiences visceral recollections of memories related to the school and understands that “it” isn’t “far off” and “never will be,” here using the obscure “it” to reinforce the unspeakable and mysterious nature of the horrors that were committed at the school, which have yet to be revealed to the reader.
