The Nickel Boys

Nickel’s Christmas display is renowned statewide. People come from all over Florida and neighboring states to view the spectacle. Although the boys do all the work of hanging lights and assembling displays, they receive little credit. Yet, despite this, the boys take pride in their work. They see hope for something better in the flashing lights. As Turner and Elwood sit on a hill and observe the pageantry, Elwood comments, “We did good” (131).

The thousands of twinkling lights are beacons of hope for all of the Nickel boys. The image of light eradicating darkness is a potent one, and Elwood sees in the spectacle the hope that one day the darkness of racism will retreat before the light of tolerance. 

When Elwood is assigned to Community Service detail—a cover for delivering stolen goods all over the town of Eleanor—the first thing Turner tells him is to keep him mouth shut. Shocked by the flagrant illegality he witnesses, Elwood keeps detailed records in a journal on every delivery he and Turner make. Spurred by his earlier success in getting a letter published in an activist newspaper, Elwood believes this journal will expose wrongdoing at Nickel and free him and the other boys.

The journal represents Elwood’s trust in a fair and just world, the kind Martin Luther King Jr. described: “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” In such a world, Elwood could take down the entire Nickel apparatus if only good White people know the truth. Of course, what Elwood doesn’t realize is just how deeply Nickel is embedded in a self-perpetuating, White supremacist, financially lucrative system. The reckoning that comes is lackluster at best—decades too late, too meager to punish anyone involved, and with little recompense for victims besides a small measure of healing.  

Beyond Nickel’s laundry and the horse stables sit two large oak trees with an iron ring pounded into each one. Rings like these are a staple of concentration camps as well as southern plantations. At Nickel, they are called “out back,” and are where Spencer takes boys for the most severe punishment—a horsewhipping that usually lands the boy in an unmarked grave. The idea that Spencer can disappear boys who go against him or defy White authority with no repercussions and with complete impunity is the logical, monstrously horrific, endpoint of the system Nickel has created. They represent the brutal punishments meted out to anyone who would.