35 pages • 1 hour read
Chris CroweMississippi Trial, 1955
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Father-Son Relationships
Throughout the text, father-son relationships are presented as complicated things that do not have clearly-defining rules or regulations. These relationships ebb and flow throughout the text and become a point of concern for Hiram as he navigates his own relationship with his father and with his grandpa. That you can love someone but dislike what they believe or how they act is an emotionally-complex dynamic. Hiram does not really begin to understand this until he returns to Greenwood and sees that his relationship with his own father is dangerously on the path that his father has with Grampa, a fate he wants to avoid. His experience that summer in Greenwood allows him to go back to Arizona and renew a healthy relationship with his father. R.C. and Naomi Rydell are another example of a negative father-child dynamic, but in a more extreme way, insofar as having to deal with a physically- and emotionally-abusive father. This is something R.C. chooses to escape by moving to Jackson, and Hiram continually wants to save Naomi from this situation.
Southern Pride
Grampa and many other inhabitants of Greenwood and the surrounding area work under the rallying cry that the South will remain exactly as it is. The desire to maintain separate ideologies from the North creates an atmosphere of anxiety and resistance in the Mississippi Delta. Though there are individuals who see more clearly on the issues of race and segregation (like Mr. Paul) the overwhelming mindset is that the North is trying to impose upon the Southern way of life, which is set in its ways and does not have the space or capacity to adapt to a more morally-sound existence. That ignorance dominates is evident, and even in the Greenwood Commonwealth, which Grampa reads religiously each evening, the reports are stilted towards this Southern way of thinking, a mode that is carried out by prominent groups like the White Citizens’ Council. These are the types of issues that Hiram’s father wished to escape and protect Hiram from by moving to Arizona.
Racism/Segregation
On the brink of the Civil Rights Movement, the Mississippi Delta is a hotbed for racial prejudice and segregation. A part of the country still operating under the Jim Crow Laws, and conversation about integrating schools becomes a divisive one. These issues are not ones Hiram originally considers when he is growing up there. Only upon his return does he begin to ask questions and observe and process the nature of segregation. He reconsiders his father’s perspective and also takes in the information from Mr. Paul’s conversations, eventually developing his own opinions on the matter. His examination of conscience enables him to make some tough choices, though the morally-right ones.
