The Reformatory: A Novel

“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.

“Papa had driven her out that way once to collect money he was owed, and he’d pointed out the Reformatory as they passed the sprawling, regal green lawn behind mighty spiked fences.

Gloria remembered, as if for the first time, exactly what Papa had said as they passed the grounds: ‘That’s the first place they start killing us.’”

In this passage, Due uses a brief flashback to set the reader’s expectations around the Reformatory. Robert’s remark emphasizes the word “first,” implying that even if a Black person were to survive its violence, it would only set the tone for the sort of violence they will experience for the rest of their life. In the Jim Crow South, much of the Black experience centers around the attempt to survive white violence.

“Well, I’ll tell you the same thing I tell the rest: there’s no such thing as ghosts. That’s an absolute fact. And even if there were, ghosts would be the last worry on my mind if I were on my way to the Reformatory.”

Loehmann tries to reassure Robbie that the ghosts of the Reformatory won’t harm him because they don’t exist. However, he says that even if the ghosts did exist, there are far greater threats for Robbie to worry about, foreshadowing the abuse that he will suffer during his incarceration.

“When Sammy asked him what had happened to him, Luke said the Reformatory was full of haints who kept him awake at night. Who sometimes dragged him from his bed. He said no one could sleep for the screams or the fear they might be next. And when Sammy asked Luke what the haints did after they dragged you away, he only shook his head in his old-man way with tears in his eyes. And Luke never cried, not even when he’d fallen from the big oak outside Sammy’s house and broken his arm in two places.”

Just as Gloria’s expectations of the Reformatory are based on her father’s comments, Robbie’s expectations are shaped by the stories he’s heard from his peers. The novel briefly relates the story of his friend’s brother, Luke, who is hardly ever distressed, even when he finds himself in tremendous pain. The fact that the Reformatory inspires despair in Luke is a hyperbolic comparison—the Reformatory is more terrifying than pain itself.

“Here’s what that sign really says in plain English: as an officer of the state, I will beat you bloody and sleep like a babe at night because it will make you a better man. God himself says so. Do you understand?”

This passage provides insight into Haddock’s function as the antagonist of the novel. Haddock believes that his physical abuse of the Reformatory boys is a responsibility granted to him by God. With this passage, the reader can intuit that Haddock gets a sadistic thrill out of causing pain in others. Thus, his role as the Reformatory superintendent aligns perfectly with his capacity for violence.

“So Robert made his first promise to himself as the newest resident of the Gracetown School for Boys: he would please the adults by acting scared, but he would never be scared from that moment.”

Aside from the rules that Due establishes to dictate the dynamic between Robbie and the ghosts, Due also lets Robbie establish rules for his own survival at the Reformatory. Interestingly, the former set of rules will later clash against the latter. In this case, Robbie’s decision to repress his emotions in front of the other boys is at odds with his later decision to empathize with the haints.

“In a flash of knowing as thin as a spider’s web, Robert saw the writhing boys, faces twisted with pain and terror, half hidden in the smoke clouds, some already charred black. They pounded with frantic arms against a wall, thunder.

Begging and screaming. Dying.”

Due juxtaposes the manicured image of the Reformatory campus with the sudden, terrifying image of boys trapped in a burning room. Crucially, this juxtaposition relies on the reader’s understanding of the genre elements present in The Reformatory. The reader can intuit that because this novel is a ghost story and because Robbie is the only one reacting to this image, then it must be Robbie’s first exposure to the haints that haunt the Reformatory.

“She was only five years older than Gloria, and sometimes she knew when to give Gloria room for a breath here and there, not just treating her like hired help. Gloria had known Miss Anne since she was little—Miz Lottie used to bring her and Robbie to the white Powells’ when she was their cook, and Mama often had played their piano to lead Christmas carols—but they were mostly strangers even though Gloria had cleaned and cooked for her almost a year.”

Due introduces Miss Anne by discussing her shared history with Gloria. This passage emphasizes that despite their early friendship, Gloria and Anne have regressed into something less than friends. As they grew up, Anne adopted the social expectations that bar Gloria and Anne from truly being friends.

“Was this all life was? A series of experiences and then someone feeding you as if none of it had ever happened? As if you’d never left any impression on the world? Each day Gloria worked at the Powells’ house instead of going to school the way she and Mama had planned, she felt an unlived version of her life sailing away, out of grasp. She’d never felt so trapped, wishing to be anywhere else to help Robbie.”

In this passage, Gloria contemplates the mundane yet futile quality of her life. She knows that a bigger life is possible through education, but she cannot access this privilege because of the social standards that bar her from pursuing it in comfort. Gloria struggles with faith and hope as her circumstances prevent her from living the life she wants to live.

“A tiny clink rang as Redbone lifted a dripping plate he’d rinsed. ‘Just tell him he ain’t real and he’ll leave you be,’ he said. ‘Most times.’

Not real? The boy was as real as he was, casting a shadow against the large metal vat. Robert could see his freckles.”

One of the first rules that the novel establishes regarding haints is that they can be dismissed. Robbie reacts incredulously to this rule, suggesting that the desire to dismiss haints shrugs off the realities that their existence speaks to, including the violence that led to their deaths.

“‘I don’t b’lieve in “evil” in most ways,’ Miz Lottie said. ‘I believe in the devil, all right, but man don’t need no help from Satan to do what folks call “evil.” Man do evil ev’ry day and call it doin’ their job.’”

In this passage, Miz Lottie comments on the banality of evil, suggesting that humankind has a natural tendency toward evil. People hide between the excuses of duty and responsibility to sanitize their actions, which echoes Haddock’s mission statement in Chapter 6.

“That was all anyone said: Don’t let anyone know or see anything about you. Don’t be.”

During his incarceration, Robbie is constantly reminded to repress facets of his identity to protect himself. This passage shows how Robbie’s sense of how to live at the Reformatory resonates with the existence of the haints, who are barely capable of defining themselves beyond the nature of their death. Just as the haints exist around the fact of death, Robbie and the other living boys exist around the fear of death and “not being.”

“‘Your daddy has a big damn mouth and thinks he’s good as a white man,’ Warden Haddock said, ‘and that’s crime enough in Jackson County.’”

In this passage, Haddock makes it clear that Gracetown’s harassment of Robert is driven by the resentment that he is Black. He admits to this behind the doors of the Funhouse, where Robbie cannot speak truth to power or wield this knowledge to his advantage. Haddock’s words reflect The Racism of the American Criminal Justice System.

“The dead boys were called every name except Murdered: accident or oversight or cautionary tale.”

This passage shows the ways that language can sanitize violence and the tragedy of death by obscuring them with euphemisms. Whenever a boy is killed at the Reformatory, his death is registered in ways that will enable the school to avoid scrutiny by the authorities. The prison administrators wash their hands of the fault by claiming that circumstances beyond their control resulted in the boys’ deaths.

“The captain was nothing like Sheriff Posey. The sheriff and his deputies wouldn’t think twice, or even once, before shooting Negroes—like they had shot Mr. Clement’s son in the apple orchard when all he’d stolen was a sack full of apples. They would shoot even if their mama was watching. Even if their children were watching. Even if they had no weapon like a box that might or might not be a bomb. In the radio world, everything worked like it should, a pretty lie. Robert’s eyes already ached, too puffy from his crying, but more tears leaked out. Now that he’d been arrested and seen the lie up close, he could never like Dragnet again.”

In this passage, Robbie becomes disillusioned with the media’s popular depiction of the police, knowing that the reality is much more terrifying than the radio show Dragnet suggests. He cannot bring himself to appreciate the show once he realizes that his local police force actively antagonizes the Black members of the community.

“Robert whispered to the ghost, ‘I’m sorry you got pneumonia.’ Wasn’t that all haints wanted? For someone to be sorry?”

This passage represents a turning point in Robbie’s relationship to the haints. Rather than dismiss a haint or deny its humanity, Robbie listens to what the haint has to say and then answers with sympathy. When he realizes that this is precisely what he would want in their place, he moves away from prioritizing his comfort to underscore the need for radical solidarity at the Reformatory.

“‘One day,’ Channing said, ‘things will be different for everyone. You’ll see.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Gloria said. ‘Papa said we’d be farther along now if people weren’t so scared to tell the truth. Is that gonna change too?’”

Though Channing believes that the way of the world will eventually shift to uplift marginalized voices, Gloria does not share her optimism. Her skepticism stems from the fact that many of her allies, such as Channing, Miss Anne, and Loehmann, have failed to use their privilege as white people to affect Robbie’s case. Channing, for instance, fears being blacklisted at law school if she supports the case. However, this fear also rings true to her failure to speak up for herself as a member of the lesbian community.

“‘You think no McCormack ever got sick and died?’ Miz Lottie didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Seems like, that’s what you said. Nothin’ ain’t never what it seems. This whole world is a lie—the bad things, the good things. Only God’s kingdom is the truth. And when I meet Jesus face-to-face, you can bet I’ll have some questions. But ’til then, I don’t know why some got so much and we got so little. Could be a test. But I feel God blessing me, Gloria.’

‘But how do you know?’

‘It ain’t my head that knows,’ Miz Lottie said. ‘But my heart do.’”

In this passage, Gloria confronts her skepticism by asking Miz Lottie about her faith. Due contrasts Gloria and Miz Lottie by showing the former’s fixation on concrete evidence that life has any meaning. Miz Lottie argues that faith does not require evidence and that the tension between what is known and what is not should fuel one to live on in pursuit of the good.

“Blue had been right: Robert never could have guessed how low a man Haddock could be. He wasn’t satisfied with beating and hurting boys who were alive: he hunted dead ones too.”

This passage comes after Robbie learns about Boone and Haddock’s method for trapping haints in ash. Haddock’s unique sense of cruelty is compounded by the fact that he doesn’t just abuse living boys; he also asserts his power over the dead by imprisoning them as trophies in an ash jar where they are made indistinguishable from one another.

“‘One thing I’ve learned,’ Miz Lottie went on. ‘Everything seems fine until it ain’t. And then we come to see it wasn’t never “fine.”’”

During the meeting with Judge Morris, Miz Lottie makes this observation, which resonates with the earlier passage on language’s ability to sanitize the truth. Her observation speaks to how the United States might portray itself as a “fine” nation with a “fine” history, only for time to reveal the dark truths just below the surface of its history.

“The system, Mrs. Hamilton had said. TRUST in the system. The words lanced her. How could she trust in a system that would lock up her brother over nothing? A system that would leave arsonists unpunished after they burned down her house? And chase Papa out of town?”

Gloria finds it difficult to reconcile Mrs. Hamilton’s advice in this passage with the reality she has experienced through her journey thus far. The failure to influence Robbie’s case through the usual legal avenues reveals that the system is predisposed to favor the Stephenses’ harassers, which is precisely why she finds it difficult to trust such a system.

“Friends die for each other, Robert. The secret to war is the sacrifices friends make for each other, and this is your war. Don’t let your friend’s sacrifice be for nothing.”

Mrs. Hamilton, a war widow, urges Robbie to think of Redbone’s death as an act of radical solidarity. As Robbie struggles not only to liberate himself but also to fight for the redemption of the haints, he is told not to think that Redbone died in vain or that his death is meaningless. Rather, his death crucially enabled Robbie to continue his struggle, so he must honor Redbone by continuing the fight.