QUOTES - QUOTATIONS AND ANALYSIS

The book begins with the following line, describing the academic awards assembly at Ballou High School's auditorium:

A hip-hop tune bursts forth from the six-foot high amplifiers, prompting the shoulder-snug slopes of black teenagers to sway and pivot in their bleacher seats. It takes only a second or two for some eight hundred students to lock onto the backbeat, and the gymnasium starts to thump with a jaunty enthusiasm. (1)

The opening image is actually one of sound, with the emphasis on the size of the amplifiers making clear how loud it is. The image of the heads bobbing in unison so quickly shows there is a shared bond among those in the auditorium, a shared appreciation and cultural understanding. It is significant, then, that Cedric Jennings is not present for this event. The event is for his benefit, in praise of his academic achievement - however, that is beside the point, that is not what defines the value of the audience, who are the vast majority of Ballou students.

Regarding this disconnect between his values and those of his fellow students, Cedric receives some early advice from his mother Barbara in this passage:

"The race," she says with a satisfied smile, "goes not to the swift nor the strong, but he who endureth until the end."
Oh yes, that's a good one, Cedric agrees, and nods. Hasn't heard that one in a while. "Thank you, Jesus," he says to her with a wry smile as he makes his way toward the back bedroom. Stopping at the threshold, he turns and calls back: "But it wouldn't be so terrible to be all swift and strong - just once in a while - and let some other people do all the enduring."
Barbara, sunk back into the couch, can't help but laugh. (15)

The combination of shared understanding and easy laughter shows an intimate trust between son and mother, despite the way they grow distant as Cedric grows older. The discussion on Biblical scripture emphasizes the importance of faith for this family but also an acknowledgment that such faith can be difficult at times. The manner in which Cedric turns around the Bible verse also illustrates how clever he can be, especially when dealing with something with which he is familiar. It is when he's forced to work beyond his comfort zone - academically as well as socially - that he becomes awkward.

More than awkward, he sometimes feels physically threatened, as when he recalls how a student threatened to harm him when he had last attended an academic assembly like the one he shirked at the start of the book:

He hasn't thought about any of that for almost a year. He just pushed it out of his mind. But now, as the bus rumbles through the gritty circus on Martin Luther King Avenue, it suddenly dawns on him. Maybe that's why he didn't go to the awards assembly. It wasn't that he was ashamed of his achievements or too weak to face the razzing. He was scared. Maybe that kid's still out there. That's why he hid. He's scared right now. Nothing wrong with that.

He let out a little high-pitched laugh, drawing an anxious stare from an old woman sitting next to him. He smiles at her and she looks away. Yes sir, he muses, feeling a weight lift. His absence didn't mean they'd won and he'd lost. He was simply scared to death. That's something he can live with. (23)

In this manner, Cedric rationalizes why he chose not to attend the assembly this time around. The sentences are constructed to feel like he is making excuses - such as the hypothetical "Maybe that kid's still out there" - but also brings home that such matters cannot be taken lightly, that the excuses are actually quite valid. The phrase "simply scared to death" no longer makes it a case of standing up for a moral principle or defending his values, but of simple common sense. After all, there is "Nothing wrong with that" - a matter-of-fact attitude that shows how much fear defines the neighborhood and school Cedric inhabits. Suskind expresses the tragedy of this situation in the following passage:

A boy, if he's lucky, discovers his limitations across a leisurely passage of years, with self-awareness arriving slowly. That way, at least he has plenty of time to heroically imagine himself first. Most boys unfold in this natural, measured way, growing up with at least one adult on the scene who can convincingly fake being all-powerful, omniscient, and unfailingly protective for a kid's first decade or so, proving that invaluable canopy of reachable stars and monsters that are comfortably make-believe. (31)

This is an early example of how Suskind uses the particulars of Cedric's situation to write of broader patterns of childhood development and education. The writing is lofty and abstract - passages such as "a leisurely passage of years" is breezy in its offhand style - thus effectively setting apart the ideal it describes from the realities in Cedric's life. He doesn't have this "canopy" of an all-powerful adult - instead, he has a corrupting father and a mother whose frailties are all-too-apparent. This goes a long way to explaining the desperation he feels when he explains why he works so hard at his studies:

"It's the only way I'll be able to compete with kids from other, harder schools," says Cedric, defining a block of text from one screen and moving it to another. "I mean, what choice do I really have?"

This is Cedric's standard line - he's been saying it as a sort of half-apology since he arrived in ninth grade and realized that with so little work being done during class time, extra-credit projects would be so crucial to learning anything. Today, though, he enunciates the words with a measured clarity, like he's addressing an audience. For now, the convenient aphorism "kids from other, harder schools" is metamorphosing into real flesh and bone. He'll be hearing from MIT any week now. As he sees it, it will be those kids or him. Lately, he's managed to conjure them and hate them. He doesn't analyze what he's doing, but he knows it's working. (45-46).

Cedric's competitive nature is highlighted in this passage, but also his need to hide his true feelings. He seems vaguely ashamed about his situation - it's a "half-apology" - but also crystallizes his goal and makes his challenge more tangible. Thus, the "kids from other, harder schools" become more real for Cedric, which allows him to "hate them", which in turn becomes a means to better motivate himself. The last line shows the mysterious effect this tactic has for him, at least at this early stage. It's worth noting that his hatred for these kids changes when he actually encounters them - the reality of dealing with such people is more complex, more confusing, than the hate that pushes Cedric at this part of the story.

When Cedric finds out he has been accepted into the MIT summer program, it is described as such:

"Wait. Wait. ' We are pleased to inform you...' Oh my God. Oh my God!" he begins jumping around the tiny kitchen. Barbara reaches out to touch him, to share it - her moment, too - but he spins out of reach.

"I can't believe it. I got in," he cries out, holding the letter against his chest, his eyes shut tight. "This is it. My life is about to begin." (76)

The line "but he spins out of reach" clearly foreshadows how Cedric's life would take him away from Barbara, and how she already fears such a thing happening. Cedric's insistence that "My life is about to begin" shows how important this change is. There is a clear selfishness to this statement - "My life" - instead of "Our life". As part of his reinvention, he is at least subconsciously aware of how much he will have to leave behind, including some of the intimacy and trust he places in his mother. However, things do not go as well as Cedric would like in the MIT MITES program, as evidenced by his final meeting with Professor Trilling. Returning from this meeting to his dorm room, we read:

He recovers his bearings enough to walk stiffly to the bed and lie down, closing his eyes and beginning a first replay of the scene: of him in the office, of Trilling's words - "not MIT material." Remembering how small he felt sitting there, how he tried to heave up some explanation of all he'd been through, a word starts crowing into the passing images and he tries to press it down - it's not right - but he can't.

With his eyes still closed, Cedric yells, "RACIST!" (97)