48 pages • 1 hour read
Don AkerThe First Stone
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2003A 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
Redemption and Forgiveness
Until Reef meets Leeza, he presents as an unredeemable character. In the courtroom where the prosecution lays out the facts against him—including pictures of the automobile wreckage—he acts as if it is a pageant meant to inconvenience him. He doesn’t understand why everyone is being so dramatic when only one person was hurt.
Redemption means to be saved or to experience salvation. Redemption typically requires the intercession of another person or, in Christianity, a divine being who offers salvation. When the judge sentences him, she gives Reef a chance to improve his life and make a difference.
Even though the word “redemption” has strong religious connotations, religion and faith do not have a specific role in Reef’s redemption. In the story’s first half, he is too angry and frightened to consider that he might change. His insistence that he doesn’t make plans precludes any plans or strategies he might use to work on himself because that would require him to consider his future.
The theme of redemption and forgiveness, in terms of Reef’s self-image, begins when he compares himself to the protective coral reef. He can’t protect Nan, however, and his rage is, in large part, a result of his inability to protect her: “In the end, he hadn’t been able to save the one person who’d meant everything to him. Had had to watch the cancer burn her up, her body like an ember that crumbled into ash” (35).
Leeza becomes one important instrument of Reef’s redemption. Her influence makes it possible for Frank and Alex to make inroads with him. Reef wants to be better for her, even before he can conceive of being better simply for his own good. He wants to be the person she deserves, and she galvanizes him to positive action.
Frank’s redemption does not occur in the story, but he is another example of someone who made the most of a bad situation. Although the reader doesn’t get the details, Frank spent time in Dorchester Prison. Rather than returning to a life of crime after prison, Frank tries to help others. When he tells Reef that his time at North Hills is a gift, he means it.
When Reef dedicates himself to being a better person, Reef is able to be a support for Alex as well. Like Frank, he chooses to help others, hoping to stop problems for the groups he speaks to before they can start.
Forgiveness is more elusive in the book. Reef faces the consequences of his actions, initially reluctantly but later with an honesty that reflects his growth. When he realizes that a person can change—that he has indeed changed—there is an implication that he has forgiven himself for his actions that hurt him and others. There are hints that Leeza may someday forgive Reef, but it is left for the reader to speculate.
Consequences and Rehabilitation
In delivering her sentence, Judge Thomas says,
More important than fear of punishment is the need for compassion, the need for better choices, the need for young people who commit crimes to recognize that they are and will continue to be members of a society, and that the actions of everyone in that society impact in some way on every other member (78).
She is not jaded about the legal system, but she does not believe that incarceration has a high probability of success for rehabilitating youth offenders. Her instincts prove wise, as Reef eventually thrives under Frank’s care and becomes a force for good.
Much of Reef’s early suffering is the consequence of other people’s actions, with his grandfather being the greatest offender. Because of his grandfather’s abuse and alcoholism, Reef becomes a person who is capable of throwing the stone off the overpass. Subsequently, he interprets anything that gets in his way as society being against him. Everything feels like a consequence to him, a punishment from people who don’t want him, which leads him to surround himself with similarly troubled peers.
After he is sentenced, Reef accepts the judge’s punishment because he thinks it will be better than prison. However, he has no concept of being rehabilitated because he doesn’t think he needs rehabilitation—or that he is beyond it. He frustrates his lawyer, Elliott, who says, “You just don’t get it, do you? You’ve just been given a break. You get to walk out of here and make a difference in your life. That is, if you have the guts to do it” (81). Elliott challenges Reef to become more than a recidivism statistic. Echoing Elliott’s sentiment, Frank tells Reef he was given a “gift” (103). Frank knows this better than most because he understands the path that leads a young person into more serious crimes.
Ultimately, the worst consequence that Reef suffers is his separation from Leeza. He has already acknowledged that he is the one who hurt her, but until he faces her, he doesn’t understand how much genuine rehabilitation will require of him. Just as he begins to love her, she removes herself from his life. This rejection is a just, poetic consequence, and it speaks to Reef’s credit—and Frank’s mentorship—that he does not protest, berate her, or beg for another chance. Like Brett, Alex, and Frank, Leeza understands that Reef has changed. However, for her mother, Reef’s (alleged) rehabilitation does not grant him the right to be part of her life. This is another consequence of committing a crime: forfeiting the right to be observed in a more favorable light after the sentence is fulfilled.
Leeza’s experience of consequences and rehabilitation follows a sharply different trajectory than Reef’s. For Leeza, the consequences she experiences are not her fault. She is an innocent victim of Reef’s careless choice to throw the rock. However, the consequences of his actions become her problem, causing her significant bodily injury and emotional pain. She is changed forever due to Reef’s action, and then, in a narrative twist, she is changed again by meeting Reef during her recovery. Her rehabilitation involves physical healing and the expected various types of therapy, but it also involves Reef, who is volunteering at the care facility. Finding she can laugh with him and talk to him aids in her recovery, and she makes great strides in her emotional and physical healing. In the case of Leeza, the cause of the consequences that change her life also becomes a determinant of her rehabilitation.
Justice and Morality
Justice involves determining commensurate punishments that fit the severity of the offense. The justice system works for some and not for others. It is ostensibly meant to rehabilitate and dissuade criminals through punishments, incarcerations, and making examples of particularly heinous offenders. However, the justice system can also make mistakes. It can punish too severely, innocent people can receive punishments for the crimes of others, and the prison system can create more criminals, hardening those it is meant to rehabilitate.
Beyond the granular adherence to the letter of the law, justice and morality are subjective, depending on which end of a crime one finds themselves on. After Judge Thomas sentences Reef, Leeza’s mother is horrified at the injustice of it. She says the ruling “was anything but fair” and shouts, “My daughter was lying in a hospital bed with injuries to more than half her body, and that animal…was sentenced to be a volunteer” (82-83). In her view, her daughter volunteered to work with older people out of kindness, but Reef, after destroying her daughter’s body, receives the opportunity to volunteer as a punishment. She feels similarly when she meets Reef in the hospital. Diane doesn’t care that Leeza and Reef care about each other. Justice, for her, demands that Reef suffer for the suffering that he caused. Her outrage is more aligned with the Biblical scale balancing of an eye for an eye rather than the idealistic approach of Judge Thomas.
At the novel's end, Reef shows only faint signs of developing a moral compass or a sense of justice. However, his sense of injustice is real, even though he only applies it to himself. There is no way to pursue justice or morality when one is committed only to serving one’s needs, lacks compassion for others, and refuses to take accountability. On that note, serious discussions of morality require understanding right and wrong or good and evil, depending on one’s perspective. This requires reflection and self-scrutiny, which is uncomfortable—or even unnatural—for many people, particularly children. That Reef spends so much time later in the book contemplating his actions and making intentional choices seems to indicate that he is gaining the awareness needed to develop a moral compass.
Whether one reads The First Stone as a tale of good and bad or right and wrong, Reef develops a moral framework. When he loses Leeza, he is at the most stable, hopeful point in his life, resulting from Judge Thomas’s ruling and Frank’s influence. Reef has made so much progress that he accepts her potential loss, without spiraling into anger and reverting to old habits. When Reef says that he wants to be better, he is acknowledging that there is a morality worth adhering to. When he takes accountability for his actions, he becomes a willing participant in the justice system, vindicating the judge’s instincts for his sentence.
