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They say the kids are dumb and so they're teaching them to work with their hands. Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure that they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.
This description falls early in the novel, as the narrative focuses on Fonny’s development as a sculptor. Fonny became an artist when he rejected the restrictions of his vocational school, leaving and taking the workshop’s collection of wood to become material for art, rather than the useless furniture the school was teaching the students to build. While the novel often addresses the ways the criminal justice system stands between the characters and freedom, this section reveals how the educational system is part of the same problem. The novel demonstrates that Fonny is intelligent and driven—a marked contrast to the idea that the students at vocational school are stupid, which supports the assertion that the true purpose of the school is to constrain their lives. Fonny’s rejection of the school shows his willingness to resist the systems meant to hold him back, an example of the novel’s theme of the struggle to live freely.
Daniel, who cannot abandon his mother, yet longs to be free to confront his life; is terrified at the same time of what that life may bring, is terrified of freedom; and is struggling in a trap… Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? And why not every man? The song is old, the question unanswered.
This moment occurs in the middle of the book, on the night that Fonny meets Daniel on the street and invites him to the pad for dinner. Newly released from prison, Daniel is struggling to find a way to live as a free man. His arrest and conviction on false charges have left him shaken, as has the trauma he experienced in prison. Although Daniel is described as struggling and terrified in this scene, the song lyrics incorporated into the text suggest he can attain freedom. The spiritual quoted here refers to the biblical prophet Daniel, whom God rescued from a lion’s den. Like many spirituals, the song has an additional meaning of longing for deliverance from slavery and the faith that freedom will one day come. This allusion extends the theme of the struggle to live freely beyond the lives of the characters to the long history of Black people’s resistance to oppression in the United States.
And I understand that the growth of the baby is connected with his determination to be free. So. I don’t care if I get to be as big as two houses. The baby wants out. Fonny wants out. And we are going to make it: in time.
This passage comes late in Part One of the novel, following the first visit Tish makes to Fonny after she quits her job at the department store. At this point, Tish understands that the baby’s growth and increasing readiness to leave the womb is both a source of courage for Fonny and a metaphorical reflection of his situation. The baby faces a biological struggle for freedom that mirrors Fonny’s struggle, but the baby’s escape from the captivity of the womb is inevitable. It is a matter of time, and by this point in the book, a short amount of time. In this moment, Tish senses that the connection between the baby and Fonny ensures that he, too, will find that his struggle leads to freedom. The parallels between Fonny and the baby illustrate that the urge toward freedom is a natural one and implies that the outcome, even if delayed, is inevitable.
