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Part Three
Chapters 11 & 12
Summary: Chapter 11
In 1975, Elwood is living in New York City. It’s a hot Fourth of July holiday, and the sanitation workers are striking, so garbage is piling up on the streets. Elwood’s girlfriend Denise goes out to buy ice for rum and cokes. Elwood reflects on his arrival in New York in 1968 during a famous garbage strike. After working several other jobs, Elwood now works for a moving company. He has back problems from lifting heavy things. Elwood met Denise while he was getting his GED and she was teaching ESL students in the classroom next door. Elwood and Denise watch the movie The Defiant Ones about a prison escape, then they have sex and go to bed. The next day Elwood is planning on buying a used van so he can start his own moving company. He later realizes that he chose the name Ace Moving because Ace was the highest level you could achieve at Nickel, and once you reached it you “graduated.”
Summary: Chapter 12
The narrator recounts four ways to get out of Nickel. The first is to “serve your time”–either your sentence, the time it took to advance to Ace, or the time until you turned 18 years old. The second is for the court to intervene, and every now and then a judge would overturn a sentence. The third is to die, either from natural causes combined with the brutality and neglect of Nickel, or from abuse at the hands of the Nickel staff. The fourth is to run away. The narrator tells the story of Clayton Smith, who ran away after being sexually abused by a houseman, Freddie Rich. Clayton tried to hitchhike to his sister’s house in Gainesville, Florida, but the man who picked him up was a former mayor of Eleanor and a member of the board of directors at Nickel. He drove Clayton back to Nickel, where he was beaten to death and buried in the secret cemetery.
Elwood has given up fighting until his grandmother Harriet comes for a visit, looking frail and sad. She tells Elwood that their lawyer left town with the $200 she and Mr. Marconi had paid the lawyer to help Elwood obtain an early release. Elwood reassures Harriet that he is okay, but one sleepless night he resolves to get out of Nickel by exposing the corruption there and getting the school closed down. Elwood is ready to fight for justice again.
Analysis: Chapters 11 & 12
Chapter 11 jumps forward in time to 1975 when Elwood tries to make his way in the world after his time at Nickel. Although it is not clear what happened to Elwood after he left Nickel, the way that he lives now shows that his time at Nickel significantly altered the trajectory of his life. As a child, Elwood had high hopes for the benefits he would reap by committing to hard work and attending college. However, his life in New York City shows that the scars of Nickel linger long past his time at the academy. The fact that Elwood doesn’t earn his GED until he is an adult indicates that his time at Nickel completely derailed his life and his education. Far from being a place to earn a high school diploma, Nickel proved to be a place that used its students for labor and to earn money. The garbage piling up on the streets in New York represents the way that Elwood sees the world after his time as Nickel: as a rotten mess. The movie Elwood watches, The Defiant Ones, is reminiscent of the way that Elwood once felt about injustice before Nickel broke his spirit. When Elwood realizes why he chose the name Ace Moving for his company, it is significant because it suggests he has been ignoring his trauma since he left Nickel even while it still lingers in his subconscious.
In Chapter 12, the narrator’s descriptions of the various ways to get out of Nickel illustrate that holding on to hope at Nickel is useless. For a student to survive Nickel until their sentence is complete or they turn eighteen is risky—there is no way to ensure that they’ll survive as students are at the mercy of a very cruel staff. Even the merit system is flawed and unfair because any minor infraction might cause a student to earn demerits, leaving them uncertain of where they stand no matter how good their behavior is as the goal posts are always being moved. Although running away is possible, it poses a large risk of being caught and killed, which means that students cannot rely on the stories of escapees to give them hope. Because Elwood has given up fighting, this means he has submitted to the authority of Nickel, something Spencer wants all students to do. However, Elwood’s grandmother, Harriet, revives his hope—the loss of his lawyer, surprisingly, reignites the sense of justice that has existed within Elwood since he was a young child. By resolving to expose the corruption at Nickel, Elwood shows that he still believes in the value of standing up for one’s beliefs.
