Dear Martin Literary Elements

Young-Adult Fiction

Atlanta, Georgia, present day

Most of the novel is written in the third person. However, Jus's periodic letters to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are written in the first person.

The tone of Dear Martin is conversational and realistic. The mood of Dear Martin is sometimes lighthearted, sometimes tense and frustrated.

The protagonist of the novel is Justyce. The antagonists of the novel are Officer Castillo and Officer Tison in particular, and police brutality and racism in general.

The major conflict in Dear Martin is that of racism. Justyce grapples with racially-motivated police brutality and the systemic racism of his environment on a daily basis. He does not fix the issue of racism over the course of the novel, but rather learns to negotiate his own place in the world by the novel's conclusion.

The climax of the novel occurs in Chapter 14, when Manny and Jus are both shot. The tension builds in Chapter 13, as Manny gets upset and on a drive with Jus that quickly gets out-of-control. Chapter 14 is just three words in a vertical column: "BANG. BANG. BANG."

Early in the novel, Manny foreshadows that Jus will encounter trouble if he sets out to help Melo, who is drunk and stranded in a parking lot. He tells Jus, "This Captain Save-A-Ho thing is gonna get you in trouble, dawg" (4). Despite this, Jus goes to help Melo, but before he can take her safely home, he is stopped by a police officer who has racially profiled him. This moment leaves Jus feeling troubled and sets the rest of the events of the novel into motion.

In Chapter 4, Justin makes an allusion to Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech: "Right here, right now, on these red hills of Georgia, a son of former slaves and sons of former slave owners are sitting down at the table of brotherhood, dude. The dream has been realized!" (32). He later reveals that he played Dr. King in the eighth-grade play, after Manny had to call out sick. They put him in brown makeup during the play, a decision that would be criticized as an example of blackface today.

Stone uses imagery throughout the novel to bring detail to the novel's setting and offer insight into Jus's headspace at that moment. An example of imagery in "Dear Martin" comes from Chapter 2, when Jus and Manny are playing video games and Jus reacts negatively to the game's violent nature: "'You good, dawg?' Manny says, furiously pressing buttons on his vibrating controller as the sound of machine-gun fire fills the room in surround sound. It pushes into Justyce's ears and bounces around in his head; he can feel it pulsating in his chest: BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG" (14). In this passage, we are first given a detailed description of the sound. We are then told how it affects Justyce. Finally, Stone uses onomatopoeia to demonstrate what it sounds like with a repetition of "BANG." All of these elements bring the sound to life for the reader, so that we can truly understand what Jus is going through at that moment.