Clean Getaway

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-24

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

The Green Book

The Green Book is a guidebook first published in 1936 by Victor H. Green. G’ma explains it as “[s]omethin’ that helped keep a lotta folks like your G’pop—and me, for that matter—alive back in the day” (28). It listed places where African Americans could safely stop to sleep, eat, and get gas as they traveled across the country between 1936 and 1966 by country, state, and city, and it was updated annually.

For G’ma and Scoob, it is a symbol of the dangers that G’pop and G’ma experienced when they set out from Atlanta to Mexico in the late 1960s. There were so many places that were unsafe for G’pop because he was Black that he and G’ma wanted to see but couldn’t visit. When G’ma brings Scoob along on this last journey, she finally sees some of those places because the country has changed. However, she is also conscious of the fact that racism still exists, and that people might look at her—a white woman—funny for traveling with her Black grandson.

Ultimately, it is a guide for Scoob to see how history intersects with the present, allowing him to compare the racism throughout history towards Black people with his experiences. It also helps him to really understand that “his grandfather had needed a book that listed ‘safe’ places to do something as simple as get gas back in the day,” all because of the color of his skin (32).

G’ma’s Treasure Box

When G’ma’s treasure box first appears, Scoob is shocked to see it aboard the RV, picturing it within G’ma’s now-sold home. He has never been allowed to touch it, but on this trip, G’ma encourages him to look through it, often storing it in his backpack. It becomes a symbol of everything he never knew about G’ma, first through its contents that relate to her marriage to G’pop and their experiences of discrimination because they were an interracial couple in the 1960s, and then through its secret compartment holding the jewelry that she stole. It comes to represent G’ma in all her complexity, the good and the bad.

When G’ma passes away, Scoob picks out an urn for her that is made from the same wood that makes up her treasure box. It is also the treasure box that he buries, filled still with everything inside, at G’ma’s final destination in Mexico. This action symbolizes how Scoob has come to know his grandmother, both as the woman who helped raise him and as the jewelry thief she was, and how he has reconciled these two sides of her identity. Only then is he able to let go and leave the box, finally completing for G’ma—and G’pop, to some extent—the journey to Mexico, a “clean getaway” (223).

The Map

G’ma’s map for their journey is a recurring motif that also serves to move along the plot as G’ma and Scoob travel through and along their path to Mexico. It also serves as a time capsule that connects Scoob to the G’ma of the past, the one who circled each location on the map where she wanted to stop on her initial journey with G’pop in the 1960s.

Scoob himself draws and adds icons to the map, small symbols of where they’ve been and what Scoob himself has learned along the way, especially about the history behind their stops. For example, he draws a small emblem of the 16th Street Baptist Church after stopping there and learning about its connection to Martin Luther King, Jr., and the bombing there in 1963 that killed four little girls. In drawing a tiny version of the church on the map, Scoob viscerally connects with the history.