payment page
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Gris-gris bags
Mam and Pop make and use gris-gris bags as part of their daily lives. These small, handmade bags come from a mixture of Mam’s Vodou practices and Pop’s belief that certain objects can transfer strengths or qualities to their holders. They contain various items like herbs, stones, and bones, and Jojo and his family members carry them for protection and to ward off evil. Mam and Pop make these bags for their loved ones, ensuring each gris-gris is tailored to the person’s needs and situation. When Jojo is held at gunpoint, the police officer threatening him almost fires when Jojo reaches into his pants pocket. He’s looking for the gris-gris bag Pop made him, thinking it will protect him. It’s unclear whether it actually does, but the family are allowed to drive away mostly unscathed. The bags also connect the characters to their cultural heritage, representing a link to their ancestors and to the land they live on. They represent the ability to draw strength from one’s surroundings and to be adaptable, qualities all of the characters desperately need.
The Tree Full of Ghosts
This tree appears at the novel’s conclusion and symbolizes the collective memory and history of suffering endured by Black Americans over the years since the times of kidnapping and enslavement. The tree looks empty at first, but then a transfixed Jojo sees that it’s actually groaning full, holding the spirits of those who have passed violently. The ghosts moan their stories at Jojo, trying to communicate their pain and the injustices they suffered in life and death. Each is more horrible than the last, blending into a collective wail of suffering and rage. The tree also references the lynching trees of the American South, where Black victims were murdered, and their bodies left to rot. Although trees are more usually pleasant symbols of growth and stability, this tree symbolizes the fate suffered by all of these spirits; to be bound to the earth, unable to pass on because of their tragic unfinished business.
Parchman Farm
The Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm, is a symbol of the systemic racism and injustice of the American penal system. It is a monument to the exploitation of Black labor. When the land was first systematically tilled, the hands of enslaved Black folks tilled it. As a former plantation, the soil is full of the blood of the Black people forced to live, work, and die on it. In Jojo’s contemporary America, not much is different. Parchman is an underfunded State Penitentiary, and the indentured labor prisoners are forced to perform keeps it running. Although the land itself is not evil—it’s just land—it’s irreversibly stained with the cycle of violence that has trapped generations of Black people in imprisonment and injustice.
