58 pages • 1 hour read
Maurice Carlos RuffinWe Cast a Shadow
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 20-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3, Chapter 20 Summary
In late spring, the narrator picks Nigel up from school to prepare for Penny’s birthday. As they walk across the lawn, playing a game of charades, they are interrupted by Araminta Ahosi, the same girl who once mocked Nigel for bleaching his skin. To the narrator’s annoyance, she and Nigel recently became friends. She asks to ride along with them, and the trio heads to the Mall of the Seven Myrtles, a luxurious shopping center whose pavilion boasts a statue of Jean-Jacques LePieu, the state’s first governor, accepting an infant from a Native American. On the way to the bakery to pick up Penny’s cake, they run into Zora Suhla Smits, the current leader of BEG. Nigel and Araminta split off, and Zora admits to the narrator that BEG is in a slump. She asks him to come on board as the organization’s official spokesman. Thinking of how impressed Eckstein and Octavia will be, he accepts. As Zora hands him a pamphlet for his first speaking engagement, an explosion rocks the mall. The narrator takes off in search of Nigel and Araminta. Outside, he finds the statue of LePieu reduced to a burning pile of rubble. A figure wearing a wooden African mask points a gun at a security guard before speeding away in a getaway van. Eventually, the narrator finds Nigel and Araminta safe inside the mall. On the wall behind them, a giant graffiti tag reads: ADZE.
Part 3, Chapter 21 Summary
The narrator makes Nigel and Araminta swear not to tell Penny what happened at the mall, but when they arrive at home, the assembled family members already know about the incident. Aunt Shirley informs them that three children died in the attack, perpetrated by ADZE, a formerly respected activist group. ADZE ran afoul of the law after trying to tear down the LePieu statue. As this was considered a federal crime, the FBI was called in. Statue supporters threw a grenade at ADZE, igniting a shootout. The FBI cornered the remaining members of ADZE and bombed out the entire block, leading to 170 deaths, including those of a white family. The entire series of events was blamed entirely on ADZE, leading to increased police harassment of Black people that drove most of them out of their neighborhoods and into the Tiko or the backwoods.
Part 3, Chapter 22 Summary
On the day of the narrator’s first engagement as BEG spokesman, Nigel and Araminta accompany him to the Reinhardt Upliftment Center, a community center located in the Tiko. Inside Reinhardt, they find Supercargo with a newly shorn head. Araminta seems to recognize him from somewhere. Supercargo reveals that his dreads were cut off during an interrogation by the police after the attack at the mall. He accuses the narrator of being Zora’s puppet and reveals that Zora initially asked him to fill the narrator’s role as representative. He has since left the BEG because he disagrees with their acquiescence to the increasingly restrictive curfew and policing laws that are being put in place for the city’s Black residents.
Mayor Chamberlain gets up to speak, reassuring the crowd that the city will deal with ADZE and impose a seven-day-a-week curfew on the Tiko, essentially locking its members inside. She also plans to begin a program deporting some accused criminals to Africa. Shocked, the narrator realizes that “the mayor’s plans [will] strip rights from […] everyone who looks like us” (178). He wants to walk away, but the sight of Nigel playing obliviously in the crowd reminds him what’s at stake if he speaks up. Mayor Chamberlain introduces the narrator as the cameras swing to face him.
Part 3, Chapter 23 Summary
Penny, Nigel, and the narrator attend a company picnic hosted by Octavia. Footage of the narrator at Reinhardt appears on T.V., followed by a clip of Pavor, who claims that Mayor Chamberlain isn’t doing enough to combat the City’s “savage Black imbeciles” (182). Penny is distraught that the narrator is aligning himself with these people. He retorts that he’s only doing what he must to protect and support the family, and that she “[doesn’t] know what it means to be Black” (183). Penny disappears into a hedge maze with Nigel, and the narrator follows them after quickly downing a Plum. In the maze, he meets Octavia, who congratulates him on ingratiating himself with BEG and tells him that PHH is impressed. He enquires about the possibility of promotion, but she tells him to ask again after the job is finished. Deeper into the maze, he encounters Dinah smoking marijuana and having her face painted by Crown, who reveals that Eckstein is her father.
Part 3, Chapter 24 Summary
It’s the night of the play for which Nigel has been rehearsing. He performs beautifully, and on the way home the family jokes and laughs in the car, camaraderie between them restored. Penny goes to the bedroom to find her Polaroid camera while Nigel prepares dinner. Just as the narrator begins wondering what’s taking her so long, she re-enters the kitchen, brandishing the narrator’s diary; she has read all about the secret skin bleaching and the planned demelanization procedure. She tells Nigel he’s staying with Mama for the weekend and marches him out to the car, but the engine won’t start, so she walks him to the neighbors’. Storming back into the house, Penny slaps the narrator and screams that he cannot plan Nigel’s entire life around the small chance of something awful happening. The narrator recalls that, growing up, Mama told him that “the chances of something [awful] happening are virtually assured” (197).
Despite being a fierce activist and advocate, he believes that Penny fundamentally cannot understand “the basics of walking through life as prey” (198). He thinks of all of the microaggressions that Nigel will endure, all of the small demoralizing instances that will make him “just like [his father]” (198). Penny declares that she is going to divorce the narrator and get the house and full custody of Nigel, and he knows she is serious as she walks out the door. Running after her, the narrator trips down the front steps and finds one of Penny’s earrings embedded in his hand. Looking up, he sees Penny, who has just been run over by a police van. The officer who was driving the van begins to explain, but then stops short and asks for the narrator’s ID. The narrator tries to go to Penny, but the officer pulls a gun and shouts at him to stop. There is nothing he can do for her.
Part 3, Chapters 20-24 Analysis
These chapters introduce ADZE, a group known either as “community heroes or bigoted terrorists” (166) depending on who is asked. The story of ADZE’s fall from grace further highlights how the system is stacked against Black people. Although the violence at ADZE’s statue protest began with outside agitators throwing a grenade, blame for the entire incident was placed on ADZE and used as an excuse to bomb out activist hotspots and assign them the label of terrorists. It’s telling that in a world where police can shoot unarmed Black men and wipe out an entire apartment of people in the Tiko, an act of self-defense from a group of Black people ignites a violent and destructive panic from City officials.
In response to the ADZE attack at the mall, Mayor Chamberlain proposes harshly constricting the civil rights of the City’s Black residents. So far, the narrator’s duties as the face of Seasons’ diversity committee have mostly consisted of trying to make the firm look good, but, in these chapters, real political power comes into the mix, and he is forced to choose between advancing his own interests and doing what is morally right. Shortly before the ADZE attack, the narrator accepts a role as the spokesperson for the BEG, hoping to impress Octavia. In the aftermath of the attack, the BEG aligns itself with Mayor Chamberlain in support of the new militant restrictions on Black citizens, proving finally that their supposed mission for equality is mere lip service. When Chamberlain announces her plans, the narrator is, for the first time, shocked into recognizing how ridiculously unfair the current system is. Despite his outrage, he feels trapped into fulfilling his role as BEG spokesperson so that he can progress toward his promotion and Nigel’s surgery. When Penny confronts him about his complicity in turning the City into a police state, he brushes her off. He believes that she will be fine as a white woman, and that Nigel will also escape the effects of the new laws after his demelanization. He accepts that he and other Black people will suffer if it means that Nigel will be safe, demonstrating that his misguided love for his son can blind him to the bigger picture.
The narrator admits that showing affection to Nigel has become harder since Nigel was a baby, and this shows the relational effects of his self-hatred. He readily showed love to Nigel as a light-skinned infant, but as Nigel grows to resemble the narrator with darker skin, the narrator finds himself distancing from his son. It’s ironic that he seeks to protect Nigel from the racism of the outside world while subconsciously allowing his own internalized racism to affect his interactions with his son.
Dinah’s presence in Dr. Nzinga’s clinic is a reminder that, while Black residents of the City face the most targeted and violent racism, other people of color still endure its effects. Dinah became a shareholder without debasing herself to the degree the narrator had to, but her surgery shows that she believes looking whiter will still benefit her. In the waiting room of the clinic, the narrator also meets a bus driver he recognizes from a BEG meeting. The driver mentions that the City is funding his demelanization procedure, showing a systematic desire to eliminate Black identities and encourage assimilation to the white majority.
The narrator’s belief in Penny’s irrevocable safety is shattered when she is struck and killed by a City Police van, a van that was sent to the neighborhood because of the narrator’s presence. The one person whose safety he never questioned is taken from him, and he cannot even comfort her in her final moments. In the beginning of the novel, Penny asked the narrator to complain to the city about the police vans, but he refused, believing that the vans were there for his own protection. If he had called to complain, the van may not have been there to strike Penny. In a very roundabout way, his self-hatred and internalized racism costs him the love of his life.
