Maniac Magee

When Jeffrey arrives in Two Mills, he soon learns that the town is racially divided; Black families live on the east side of Hector Street, while white families live on the west side. No one crosses over this arbitrary boundary voluntarily until Jeffrey comes to town. At first, he is entirely unaware of the racial tension, and his innocence and friendliness prevent him from noticing the divide. Even when he is told about the racial segregation, he still can’t grasp the reason for it. To him, treating someone differently because of their skin color makes no sense. His main concern is in navigating his life as a runaway and finding a new home, so skin color doesn’t register as a potential obstacle for him until townspeople begin showing a distaste for his living arrangement with the Beales on the East End. When some townspeople call him offensive names like “whitey” and “fishbelly,” the behavior first confuses him and then fills him with guilt when he realizes that his presence has caused the Beales to become targets of hate. Jeffrey doesn’t understand that this hate isn’t personal; it is a result of a long history of racism and white supremacy that has been deeply ingrained into American society. Through the course of the novel, it soon becomes clear that Black people in Two Mills have learned to sometimes be wary of a white presence, especially in spaces that white people aren’t usually welcome and rarely frequent, like the East End. This social divide becomes most evident when an older Black man yells at Jeffrey, “Never enough, is it, Whitey? Just want more and more…Come on down to see…the monkey house […] You got your own kind. It’s how you wanted it. Let’s keep it that way. NOW MOVE ON” (61). The interaction, while inexplicable from Jeffrey’s innocent perspective, demonstrates that the old man holds resentment against white people for the way they have treated his community in the past; faced with a white boy whom he perceives to be invading his home, he takes his anger out on Jeffrey. However, Jeffrey doesn’t fully understand the implications of this larger social issue until later, when the anger does become personal. This moment occurs when he ostentatiously beats Mars in a race and realizes that “[t]he hatred in Mars Bars’s eyes was no longer for a white kid in the East End; it was for Jeffrey Magee, period” (148). He recognizes that this time, someone dislikes him for his own actions and not for the systemic social injustices that they think he represents.

Despite these rocky beginnings, however, Jeffrey grows into his identity as Maniac by performing heroic physical feats, and slowly, the town begins to accept him both for who he is and for the openness and inclusivity that he represents. In the most ostentatious version of his ongoing attempts to encourage people to transcend the fabric of racism that pervades the town, he tries to make amends with Mars and ease the racial tension by bringing him to the McNabs’. The meeting is not a miraculous peacemaking event as Maniac naively hopes, but the boy’s lack of success in this instance demonstrates the novel’s realistic approach to the ongoing issues of inequality and prejudice. In the end, racism isn’t “solved” by the brashly courageous actions of a single boy. Instead, the story is truly about the ongoing process of undoing and overcoming divisions with one small act at a time. Thus, Jeffrey’s bond with Amanda, his budding friendship with Mars, and his attempt to start a conversation between members of both sides of Two Mills represent some of his most heroic acts.