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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Clothing
Clothing symbolizes a character’s personal identity, especially their ability to fit in, providing a clear visual representation of whether someone is inside or outside a group. Repeatedly, drug dealers are immediately recognized by their trendy, expensive clothes, and Tony instantly knows that Wes has started dealing drugs when he sees Wes’s high-dollar shoes. Moore, similarly, knows that his friend Shea has started dealing because of the change in his clothing. School shirts, athletic uniforms, and military uniforms also signal group membership and create a spirit of community within the group. Moore is so desperate to fit in at Riverdale that he wears some of Nikki’s clothing to avoid wearing the same few outfits over and over. Moore’s grandfather arrives in America from Jamaica in the winter, and his warm-weather clothing identifies him as an outsider. The link between clothing and identity spans continents, too. The South Africans Moore meets are proud of the distinctive white clothing that marks them as having become men.
Houses
Houses symbolize security, both physical and financial, and multiple characters in the book express pride in home ownership. Despite the trauma she experiences in the home where her husband, Westley, dies, Joy is reluctant to leave behind the home they owned together. She relocates to the Bronx, where her parents’ home ownership offers financial security she and her children would not have if they returned to Jamaica. This move eventually plays a vital role in securing Moore’s future when his grandparents borrow against their house to pay for his military school tuition. Moore’s family’s home ownership history contrasts sharply with Wes’s experiences. His mother’s parents were able to buy their home because it was discounted after being the site of a murder. Later, Mary rents in neighborhoods outside the city, where people often take pride in their homes, but she is never able to afford to purchase one of her own. Meanwhile, for his final Job Corps project, Wes builds an elaborate playhouse for his daughter because of the protection it symbolizes.
Boundaries and Borders
Boundaries and borders symbolize the limited opportunities available in Moore’s and Wes’s neighborhoods, emphasizing how trapped they and others living in urban poverty feel there. Throughout the book, Moore emphasizes how these poor neighborhoods are essentially segregated from the rest of the city. This reality is not limited to Baltimore but is also present in the Bronx and South Africa, indicating that segregation is a wider social issue. In these neighborhoods, desperate poverty and rampant crime exist not far from prestigious universities, but the college students and faculty do not mingle with their neighbors. Moore emphasizes meeting places where people can transcend racial and socioeconomic divisions as keys to overcoming the limits of their own neighborhoods, because these locations present opportunities and broaden horizons. For Moore, attending Johns Hopkins University represents a true shift in his life, as it allows him to cross the boundary between the world he knows and the opportunity that higher education provides.
Basketball courts and even prison waiting rooms also emerge as places where people can set aside their differences and come together across boundaries. Crossing boundaries doesn’t always work, however, as Moore’s experiences at Riverdale and Wes’s in Baltimore County illustrate. Moore’s wealthy, white Riverdale classmates keep their distance from him, even after his uncle tries to arrange a baseball game between them, and Wes’s move to the suburbs cannot stop him from falling back into old patterns of engaging in crime. In these situations, the characters fail because a change of location is not enough to override differences in privilege and personal history.
