66 pages • 2 hours read
Kim JohnsonInvisible Son
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Swimming
Content Warning: This section discusses racism and murder.
Swimming is an important motif in the novel, reflecting Andre’s quest for freedom and dignity. Feeling watched for most of his days, Andre feels a particular release when he’s in the pool: He “feel[s] more alive” when he’s swimming, “like [he’s] part fish” (173). This activity gives him a sense of freedom and control over his own body that he has not felt because of the constant monitoring. As a result, swimming plays an important part in the novel because it allows Andre to have this escape.
Andre recognizes that water in general has a long history with Black Americans, saying, “That water was our enemy, haunted by ancestors left on ships and those who jumped in the ocean to choose their destiny” (89). He also points to racial discrimination in public pools as another example of how Black citizens have been separated from water. However, Terry’s advocacy for Black youth encourages them to work against stereotypes that Black people can’t swim, and such a program brought Andre into the pool for the first time. Since then, Andre uses swimming to let out his emotions and be alone. In the pandemic, when he feels especially cooped up at home, Terry’s decision to allow him to continue his community service work at Parks & Rec is crucial. “Underwater,” Andre narrates, “I’m invincible” (173).
Music
Music is another central motif in the text. Andre loves music, and it provides him with both a way of hanging out with his friends and an important outlet for his emotions. His interest is in 1980s and 1990s music, and his YouTube channel includes videos of him, Sierra, and Boogie listening to songs and responding to them in real time. He posts these videos online, accruing thousands of followers by the time he returns home from juvenile detention because his arrest video—inadvertently filmed—got so many views. This foreshadows the important role that Andre’s YouTube channel will play at the Black Lives Matter protest at the end of the novel.
When Andre and Boogie film their first video with Andre back, Andre comments that his “shoulders relax once [he] focus[es] on the music” (66). Later, when Sierra is starting to panic, Andre goes live and emphasizes that she should “[j]ust think about the music” (362). It helps them be in the moment and not panic as they try to get away from tear gas at the protest.
Andre’s love of music is also literally written in the chapter titles, as each one is a song title or a reference to a song on the playlist included at the end of the novel. Chapter 16, “Eric, Are You Okay?,” for example, is a play on Michael Jackson’s lyric “Annie, are you okay?” in “Smooth Criminal,” which appears on the playlist (151, 394). These chapter titles reinforce how important music is in Andre’s life and the ways in which music can reflect one’s experience in the world while also, at times, providing an escape from it.
Mrs. Whitaker’s Rose Bushes
Mrs. Whitaker’s rose bushes are an important symbol in the novel, representing her dark secrets and reflecting some of the complexities surrounding Black Lives Matter and White Communities. Andre initially contrasts Mrs. Whitaker’s rose bushes with the food-growing community garden that the Black community used to have in his neighborhood, with Andre reflecting on how white people like Mrs. Whitaker do not always consider how their actions can upstage Black community members and create additional hardship for them. Mrs. Whitaker can afford to focus on cultivating flowers that are purely decorative, whereas the former community garden helped low-income citizens access cheap or free food.
Most significantly of all, Andre discovers toward the novel’s end that Mrs. Whitaker has planted the rose bushes over the spot she buried Eric after murdering him. The ostensible beauty and elegance of the roses thus hides an ugly crime, embodying the ways in which superficial white allyship can sometimes hide persistent prejudice and discrimination just below the surface.
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By Kim Johnson
