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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Secret Graveyard
The secret graveyard represents the cruel and extreme treatment of students at Nickel Academy. It also represents the idea that Black people are disproportionately affected by abuse and continually mistreated by the justice system. At the beginning of The Nickel Boys, a team of archaeologists discovers the secret graveyard on the grounds of Nickel Academy. This graveyard is based on a real graveyard found on the grounds of a reform school in Florida called the Dozier School for Boys. At the Nickel Academy, no one knew about the many students who were beaten, raped, and killed at the school because their bodies were disposed of in a secret graveyard on its grounds. Most of the victims found in the secret graveyard were Black students. If anyone asked about the whereabouts of a missing student, the school officials stated that they ran away. Most of the time this wasn’t questioned because so many of the students didn’t have family support, or their family members didn’t have the capacity or influence to check on them.
The Encyclopedias
The encyclopedias symbolize the fact that hard work doesn’t always lead to fair or positive outcomes. Young Elwood works hard to win a set of Fisher’s Universal Encyclopedia left behind in the Richmond Hotel by a traveling salesman. His trusting and hardworking nature makes it easy for the kitchen staff to take advantage of him by tricking him into doing their work for a chance to win the encyclopedias. It is a heartbreaking moment when Elwood arrives home to find the books blank, and he wonders if the staff knew all along that this was the case. The kitchen staff’s trick is also one of young Elwood’s first lessons about the dangers of trusting the wrong people, and it is a lesson that he remembers during his time at Nickel. After being taken advantage of, Elwood decides not to spend his afternoons with the staff at the Richmond Hotel anymore. He keeps the encyclopedias on his bookshelf as a reminder of the incident.
Fun Town
Fun Town is the amusement park that young Elwood hopes to visit after segregation ends. Elwood knows that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s daughter, Yolanda King, wanted to go there, too. Elwood relates to Yolanda because Martin Luther King, Jr. told Yolanda when she was six years old that she wasn’t allowed to go there because of segregation. Elwood was also six was when his parents left and moved to California without him. Fun Town represents the many things Black men and women are not allowed to take part in due to segregation. Elwood wants to go to Fun Town someday, which represents his ideals and his hope for a better future.
