Dear Pulitzer Prize Judging Board,
The book written by Colson Whitehead known as “The Nickel Boys” is a book that has the power within it to change people’s perspectives and evoke empathy effortlessly by giving a raw and honest look into a minority’s life in America, and completely deserves the Pulitzer Prize it received. This book deserves the Pulitzer Prize because of how Whitehead combined many literary elements and choices that aided the beautiful build of the story and masterful character development, and because of the book’s political and emotional ties to current day issues in 2019-2020.
While evaluating Whitehead’s literary merit presented in this book, many people would agree that he made choices in his writing that made this book stand out and remain interesting through the end. He specifically played with the time in his narrative, diction, and creative character development.The narrative of this book was mostly linear but very interesting because Whitehead would occasionally switch from the present to the future, and to different narrators (From a different character’s perspective). This narrative structure is very useful and can keep the reader engaged because giving sneak peeks and clues about the future keep the readers curious and in a state of anticipation, while at the same time switching perspectives which allows the reader to understand the character narrating better. Whitehead also used diction to his advantage to really highlight the grim conditions and situations the Nickel Boys often found themselves in. The diction that is used works well to evoke emotion in the reader. This is displayed when Elwood describes the room where the boys are physically punished and abused for disobeying rules. He says “The beating room had a bloody mattress and a naked pillow that was covered instead by the overlapping stains from all the mouths that had bit into it” (Whitehead,69). Whitehead gives us a look into one of the former nickel boysTurner, which allows the reader to not only recognize the drast character development but also how the physical and emotional trauma they experienced at Nickel continues to affect them even after they leave. This continuous carrying of trauma is best explained by Turner’s wife once she understands Turner’s odd behavior when it came to certain situations, “Other small things: Him walking out of movies with no explanation beyond “I’m bored” because a scene — of violence, of helplessness — abducted him and took him back to Nickel” (Whitehead,205).
The Nickel Boys provides a raw and compelling American story following the themes of racism and inequality which are consistent themes in America’s history and present. While reading this book in 2020, I noticed a lot of similarities in the themes and sentiments shown throughout Whitehead’s writing and the struggle of racism in America as well as the Black Lives Matter movement in the present. In The Nickel Boys, Whitehead explores the ideas of racism, and inequality and how it affects those who endure it. Spanning from 2019 – 2020 the media has begun publicly showing more and more cases of police brutality which exposed the racial bias harbored by some who are in power/privileged, in this case the police. Even though the theme of this book relates very strongly to the Black American narrative now, I believe the scene in the book where the cop arrests Elwood for allegedly stealing a car instead of the white man who actually stole it is sadly similar to experiences that Black people have been dealing with for such a long time and especially now. The Nickel Boys as a book really emphasized the fact that when there is an obvious privilege imbalance it’s not something the underprivileged can just pretend is not there or ignore because they are treated significantly differently than others and are used to blame things on and look down upon. Having to endure this for so long, eventually the time will come where their suffering and continuous expectation to be quiet will come to its limit and a revolution will be necessary. This is what we are seeing in modern America today, and it will continue until change is made.
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