The Reformatory: A Novel

“Robert Stephens held his breath and counted to three, hoping to see Mama.

[…] [S]ometimes, when the June daylight charged early through the thin curtain and broke the darkness, movement glided across the red glow of his closed eyelids like someone walking past his bed. He felt no gentle kisses or fingertips brushing his forehead. No whispers of assurances and motherly love. Nothing like what people said ghosts were supposed to be, much less your dead mama.”

Due introduces the first protagonist of the novel, Robbie Stephens, through his desire to see his mother’s ghost. Due thus uses Robbie’s perspective to establish the various rules that dictate the speculative elements of the narrative. This excerpt establishes that Robbie can see supernatural phenomena and suggests that, like the June daylight, Robbie can breach the thin curtain between the living and the dead.

“Guessing at a white man’s meaning was a dangerous game.”

In this passage, Due captures the difficulty of living as a Black person in the Jim Crow era by comparing it to a dangerous game. The rules that dictate social interaction in this period are complex and duplicitous. Robbie cannot interpret Lyle McCormack’s intentions without thinking that he has a hidden agenda. On the other hand, if Robbie responds with that agenda in mind, he may end up offending Lyle, which could lead to deadly consequences.

“Mama’s stories were unsuited for the ears of children—stories of evil without consequence and pain without cease—the unholy things that happen when God blinks. Or maybe sleeps. Surely God sleeps sometimes, Gloria thought; the evidence of slumber was all around. Secretly, since Mama’s passing, Gloria wrestled with her father’s unshakable belief in God, but sometimes she made peace with the notion that Mama’s cancer had come while God’s eyes were shut. Mostly God’s eyes are open, but God blinks, there’s a hurricane, or, blink, there’s an orphan. Reverend Miles had never put it so plainly, but to Gloria it was a truth as bright as summer sun.”

Gloria’s loss of innocence marks her coming of age in the Jim Crow South. Her mother’s stories have taught her the cruelty of the world, which leads her to doubt God’s benevolence. This crisis of faith will follow Gloria throughout her journey to liberate her brother from the Reformatory, making it a significant aspect of her character arc.