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Summary
Part Two: Zion
The second part of the book opens with Fonny dreaming of sculpting wood again, beginning to make a bust of Tish. He wakes up alone in a cell. He has lost track of time and cannot remember whether he gets a shower that day. He smokes a cigarette, then masturbates. Tish visits at six o’clock and tells him that they should have a trial date soon. Sharon is not yet back from Puerto Rico, but she thinks Victoria’s testimony can be destroyed in court because she is hysterical and sometimes works as a prostitute. They may also be able to get the case thrown out because Fonny was the only dark-skinned man in the lineup, leading Victoria to identify him. Fonny and Tish assure one another that they love each other and salute each other with raised fists when the guard makes them leave.
Sharon returns from Puerto Rico and tells the family that after her meeting with Victoria, word of her visit spread around the island, making it impossible for her to continue to investigate. To avoid being recognized, Jaime borrows a different car and returns to the shantytown, where he sees Pietro carry Victoria away, screaming and bleeding from a miscarriage. According to Jaime, she has been taken to the mountains and will not be seen again. Now that she is no longer available as a witness, it is likely that the prosecution will ask for a delay. They will try to get the case dismissed, but they may have to settle for getting Fonny out on bail. Hayward tries to find Daniel, who has been transferred to a prison upstate.
Joseph goes to the Hunts’ house to tell Frank the news. He says there is a possibility the state will increase the charges against Fonny because of Victoria’s miscarriage and mental breakdown. The men argue, Frank despairing and Joseph claiming that they will get Fonny out. Frank sees his daughters in the kitchen and yells at them. Watching Adrienne, Joseph sees that she loves Frank and that he loves his daughters, despite his abusive language. Frank cries.
When Tish tells Fonny about the postponement, he becomes distant but tells Tish he will come home. Fonny starts noticing more things in jail and wondering about the other prisoners. During a visit, Tish brings him books and paper for sketching. Later, fighting back against a rape attempt, Fonny loses a tooth and ends up in solitary confinement. Hayward succeeds in getting bail set, although it is high.
Pedrocito drives Tish home after her first visit with Fonny in a long time. Fonny tells her he wants to become an artisan who makes tables rather than an artist, a change in his sense of self that he attributes to his time in jail. At home alone, Tish realizes she will give birth soon. Adrienne calls, asking if Frank is there. Weeping, she tells Tish that Frank was fired two days previously for stealing. He came home drunk and then left. Adrienne is scared. When Sharon comes home, Tish tells her Frank is missing. Joseph comes home and tells them Frank’s body has been found in the woods in a car with its doors locked and its motor running. While they are talking, Tish goes into labor. In jail, Fonny is sculpting and hears the baby crying and crying.
Analysis
The two parts of the novel are named for lyrics in the spiritual “Troubled About My Soul,” in which the speaker imagines their lost loved ones in heaven, no longer troubled by worries, and longs to join them in Zion, a term meaning heaven or a holy place. The title of Part Two, “Zion,” indicates that, in this portion of the novel, the characters will reach their own promised land. The allusion to a spiritual is an example of the novel’s motif of music and its use of elements of Black culture to ground the book as a specifically Black story—an important concept in the novel as a whole. The term Zion suggests the idea of freedom. Freedom is often expressed in spirituals as going home, which can mean both liberation from slavery as well as death and the return to God. This part of the novel contains tragic loss, in the form of Frank’s suicide, which was foreshadowed by the title. However, the title also suggests that both Fonny and the baby will escape captivity by the end of the novel, as it literally represents a coming home.
Part Two of the novel opens with Fonny’s perspective presented in third-person narration, the opposite of the opening scene of Part One, which focuses on Tish. This is the first time the novel has shown Fonny’s point of view directly, rather than showing him through the perspectives of Tish and others on the outside. In the opening lines of this section, Fonny dreams that Tish is the one in captivity, rather than him, her body trapped in wood. This inversion suggests that he feels as tormented by his distance from Tish as she does by his absence. However, his mental state in jail stands in contrast to that of his family outside. While in Part One, the sense of frantic activity continually increases as they seek paths to get Fonny out of jail, in Part Two he is left in the stillness of solitude, fearing the emptiness of being helpless and alone.
“Zion” examines the characters’ responses to the loss of hope as they struggle to live freely. Victoria’s miscarriage and subsequent disappearance put Fonny’s case in turmoil, as Hayward tells them that the state will choose to delay the trial indefinitely rather than go to trial without their best witness, given that they have no other evidence. The characters’ different reactions to this news reveal their temperaments and the novel’s thematic message about avoiding despair while struggling to live freely. Tish and her family take the news in stride, adjusting their goal to raising enough money to get Fonny out on bail. Sharon’s statement that they will not let anyone put chains on the baby captures their sense of determination. Frank, in contrast, succumbs to despair. Despite Joseph’s insistence that they keep working, Frank sees this news as the end, and he kills himself rather than see his son trapped by the legal system. Fonny himself, however, responds to the news by no longer “clinging” to hope, which has kept him focused on the world outside of the jail. His response is not to despair but to learn to live in the world he inhabits rather than holding out hope of leaving it.
