Theme Of Justice In Nickil Boys

AJ Ghate
Mrs. Burgess/ Ms. Wetter
Pre-AP English 9
3 March 2023

Elwood Changes in Justice

Justice, Justice is something feels good when it happens, but the result might not be as good as what happens to the person. In the book Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead the main character Elwood who was falsely accused gets sent to Nickel academy, which is a corrupt reform school. In Nickel, there are many injustices within the school. Will Elwood's justice help him or will it bring him down to the ground just like the other kids? In the book, Colson Whitehead illustrates the acts of justice demonstrating one’s justice may or may not help them.
Elwood has a strong sense of justice and in the time when Elwood was new to Nickel justice never helped

Elwood finally gets a chance to expose Nickel but not yet. Because during the boxing ring, someone can serve justice to the staff of Nickel. Elwood explains “The round dwindled into the seconds and Griff did not relent. [...] Turner nudged Elwood, who had a look of horror on his face. They saw it: Griff wasn’t going down. He was going to go for it” (113). This text is about Griff fighting Big Chet. Before the fight one of the staff told Griff to lose the fight because if he doesn’t something terrible will happen. This is an act of justice because Griff decided to ignore the staff. But this act of justice didn’t help as it was revealed that Griff later died after the fight. Because Elwood knew what would happen to Griff if he won, he had “a look of horror on his face” showing that it was horrible when Griff was winning. In general, Griff’s act of justice never helped him as he later died. Now nearing the end of the book there was a state inspection. Elwood uses the information for community service (second quote) to help expose Nickel for their injustices. But since Elwood chickened out, Turner had to give the information to the state inspection. Turner says, “The letter you got in your pocket, Turner said. I’ll get it to them. [...] I did it, he said. I put it in the copy of The Gator” (182-183). You can see that Turner got the notebook with all the fraudulent information to the state inspection people.