46 pages • 1 hour read
David Wilkerson, John Sherrill, Elizabeth SherrillThe Cross and the Switchblade
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1963A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
A verdict is passed in the Farmer case: Four of the boys, including Luis, are sent to prison, and three will be released. Wilkerson visits the family of one of the released boys and offers to take him back with him to Pennsylvania, but the family declines. Wilkerson feels frustrated that he still hasn’t met the boys who first drew him to New York.
Over the next four months, Wilkerson returns to New York City once a week. He spends the days walking across the city, asking God to lead him where he is needed. On the first day, he visits the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, which he has heard is the most dangerous part of New York. That day, he witnesses a shooting and ends up sleeping in his car. Over time, he learns more about gang life: The boys tell him about sex parties and parties where they pull the legs off cats. He is shocked by their casual use of pornography and marijuana. As Wilkerson begins to feel the situation in New York is hopeless, he hears another calling: to build a house where teenagers could start a new life surrounded by love rather than hate.
Chapter 7 Summary
Wilkerson believes that the root of the gang problem in New York City is loneliness. He pictures an enemy leading the boys to believe they’ll find security and happiness in gangs and then hardening their hearts and making them lonelier. He remembers being bullied as a child: Once, when the bully approached, Wilkerson prayed loudly and smiled fiercely until the bully ran away after a single, flimsy punch. Wilkerson wonders if his strong faith will be an asset in this battle too.
Though Wilkerson is unsure if true spiritual change is possible for teenagers in gangs, he still wants to make an attempt at helping them. Wilkerson drives to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, with trumpet player Jimmy Stahl. Stahl plays hymns until a large crowd of children and teens gathers. After a brief interruption by police, Wilkerson begins to preach. The teenagers initially resist, but they eventually settle and listen. Wilkerson calls up the leaders of two gangs, the Chaplains and the Mau Maus. Buckboard and Stagecoach, the Chaplains’ leaders, agree to kneel in the street with Wilkerson and pray for God to come into their hearts. However, the leader of the Mau Maus threatens Wilkerson. As Wilkerson and Stahl drive away, they wonder if the Chaplains were only pranking them by joining in prayer. Back in Philipsburg, Gwen dismisses this idea, calling the incident a miracle.
Chapter 8 Summary
Wilkerson is walking through Spanish Harlem on a warm night when he hears someone singing a hymn in Spanish and discovers a small church. The Spanish-speaking members of the church recognize him from news coverage of the Farmer trial, and they ask him why he is in their neighborhood. After hearing his story, the leader, Reverend Ortez, asks Wilkerson to come speak to a larger group of Spanish pastors from the Assemblies of God. Wilkerson accepts the invitation, and he spends the night at the home of Ortez and his wife, Delia. The next day, at the larger meeting, the pastors encourage Wilkerson to preach to all of the teenagers in a week-long rally at St. Nicholas Arena. Wilkerson is unsure about raising the funds necessary for such an event, but a lawyer approaches them and offers to pay for the arena himself. Later, Wilkerson learns that the event is scheduled for the same week as his pregnant wife’s due date.
Chapter 9 Summary
Wilkerson’s mother-in-law berates him for leaving his heavily pregnant wife for the rally in the city. Gwen asks Wilkerson if he feels he must go; when he says yes, she gladly tells him to go. Wilkerson wonders if, like his wife, he will also produce new life at the rally.
The first days of the rally are a disaster. Fewer than 100 people attend on the fourth night, and the audience is rude and restless. Wilkerson cancels the events of the evening early, unsure of the purpose of his mission. The next day, he meets Jo-Jo, the president of the Coney Island Dragons. Jo-Jo rebuffs Wilkerson’s attempts to talk, but he eventually accepts his shoes. Wilkerson brings Jo-Jo to the Ortez family and asks them to take him in for the night. Jo-Jo attends the rally and tells Wilkerson that he is trying too hard. This helps Wilkerson realize that he needs to step aside and let the Holy Spirit take over and touch the boys directly. When Wilkerson mentions his wife’s pregnancy to Jo-Jo and tells him he’d prefer to have a baby boy, Jo-Jo prays for Gwen to have a boy. By doing this, Jo-Jo intends to prove that prayer doesn’t work. However, the baby is indeed a boy, and Jo-Jo is moved to tears by the news.
Chapter 10 Summary
On the final night of the rally, the arena is filled with members of each of the major gangs, including the Chaplains, the Dragons, and Grand Gangsters, Incorporated. The Mau Maus show up late and congregate loudly in the first three rows. After a tumultuous beginning, during which the boys harass a singer, Wilkerson decides to have the teens themselves collect the offering. Six Mau Maus, including leaders Israel and Nicky, volunteer, and their menacing demeanor leads to a large donation. Although they initially seem intent on stealing the money, the Mau Maus return after several minutes and give it all to Wilkerson, to his astonishment.
However, they quickly reject Wilkerson’s sermon urging the teens to love one another, and rival gangs begin to shout out their grievances. Wilkerson asks the Holy Spirit to take over the meeting, and he begins praying silently. The rowdy teens grow silent, and then some of them begin to cry. Wilkerson tells the boys to come forward if they want their lives to be changed. Many boys, including Israel and Nicky, accept God and leave with Bibles. The next day, Wilkerson learns that the Mau Maus have ended their war on the police. He calls the hospital to tell Gwen this news; she reminds him that she has been busy with the baby.
Chapter 11 Summary
Wilkerson returns to Philipsburg, but he finds himself unsatisfied with his work in the country parish. He begins to feel called to move his family to New York City so he can minister to the boys on the street full time. On the one year anniversary of his first visit to New York City, Wilkerson returns to Fort Greene, Brooklyn. He reconnects with Buckboard and Stagecoach, the former leaders of the Chaplains, who have now joined the Army. They tell him that the Chaplains disbanded after the youth rally. Wilkerson also reconnects with Nicky, who has left the Mau Maus and wants to become a preacher himself.
Nicky travels with Wilkerson to Elmira, New York, to speak to a church group about his life and experiences. Nicky narrates how his parents abandoned him in New York after he was involved in a fatal fight; they returned with his younger siblings to Puerto Rico. He attributes his participation in gangs to loneliness. Nicky reveals that he didn’t steal the collection money on the last night of the rally because he realized that Wilkerson trusted him. In the days after the rally, Nicky gave up his violent life. Though Nicky has a speech impediment, it disappears as he speaks to the group.
Chapters 6-11 Analysis
As The Cross and the Switchblade progresses, Wilkerson becomes more deeply involved in the lives of teens in New York City gangs. In Chapter 6, Wilkerson relates reports of groups of young children—“eight-, nine-, and ten-year-olds” (63)—who associate with the gangs in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. According to Wilkerson, these children are already deeply enmeshed in a world of brutality, “cultivat[ing] violence for its own sake” and carrying “the knives and guns of their older heroes” (63). Wilkerson finds this shocking, underlining the fact that he is no longer in familiar territory and is often deeply uncomfortable about the violent world of gangs. This continues the theme of The Sacrifices Necessary for Missionary Work. However, Wilkerson perseveres in his new environment despite the challenges, trying to find out more about the children and teens who end up in gangs. This shows that he is committed to his mission, even though he struggles with it.
Wilkerson declares outright that he is “innocent” about city life, and some passages from The Cross and the Switchblade describe depraved acts and events that shock him to his core. For instance, the teenage gang members describe parties where “a group of kids gather together to pull the legs off a cat” (65), a violent act that is striking in its cruelty. Wilkerson also writes: “[O]ften, the boys told me, they would gather together in a dark corner of a park and circle around a couple, practicing mutual masturbation while the couple went through the sexual act on the ground” (65). This is an extremely sexualized image that Wilkerson is clearly disturbed by. Wilkerson is aware that details like these will likely prove equally shocking to readers, and he uses them as evidence to stress the necessity of his mission. He sees this violence and corruption of childhood as stemming from a lack of social support that he believes he can provide. These teens lead violent lives, but Wilkerson sees them as capable of transformation. This belief in the possibility of reformation is central to Christianity, with Redemption Through Baptism of the Holy Spirit being a cornerstone of Pentecostalism specifically.
Prayer also plays a prominent role in the action of this section, developing Wilkerson’s ideas on how to pray and what prayer can accomplish. In the episode involving Jo-Jo, the unhoused teenage gang leader that Wilkerson meets and brings to the youth rally, Jo-Jo challenges the efficacy of prayer. He wants to prove that God does not exist by praying for Wilkerson’s baby to be born a boy. Wilkerson immediately identifies this as a “trap” and explains to Jo-Jo that “prayer isn’t a slot machine where you put the right coin in and out comes the candy” (96). This perspective on prayer suggests that Wilkerson does not see God as a magical wish granter. This may seem inconsistent, as Wilkerson does sometimes make specific requests of God. However, Wilkerson explains that he does so in the hope of receiving signs or affirmations; the material result is secondary. Regardless, Jo-Jo ignores him and prays, mockingly repeating Wilkerson’s sermon back to him: “[If] You are up there and if You love me, give this preacher a boy” (97). Soon after, Wilkerson says he “ran into [his] bare little bedroom and […] began to pray as [he] hadn’t prayed since [he’d] been in New York” (97). Wilkerson believes God has the power to save teens like Jo-Jo—to Wilkerson, God is the savior. This is why Wilkerson now prays for a son since this would give Jo-Jo faith in God and inspire him to change his own life. When the baby is born a boy, Wilkerson attributes it to “something too deep for statistics” (97). The fact that Jo-Jo is “a changed boy” by the end of the night suggests that God answered Wilkerson’s prayers by changing Jo-Jo’s heart (97). To Wilkerson, prayer is a selfless act and he prays with deep faith.
