"The Graveyard"
The inner city housing project which is the centerpiece of the story is officially known as Governor Henry Horner Homes. None of the characters refers to it that way, however, most preferring simply “the projects.” Many children make a playfully unwitting malapropism: the Hornets. Except for nine-year-old Pharoah Rivers, whose precocious qualities is made clear early on with his metaphorical nickname which encapsulates the deadening quality on the very spirits of the inhabitants.
A Different World
One of the most beautifully constructed metaphors in the book divulges in an almost ridiculously inappropriate innocent sort of way just how different from the norm life inside these housing projects really is:
“Summer, too, was never as it should be. It had become a season of duplicity.”
Pharoah
Pharoah is truly special in his innocence. It is not the ignorance of a fool, but the authenticity of a child doing something rare these days: remaining a child through sheer force of will. He somehow manages to remain a child written (and thus living) in three dimensions even while insanity rains down around him in a world that is anything but innocent. The author turns to another dazzling example of metaphor to cut right to the heart of the matter:
“Pharoah clutched his childhood with the vigor of a tiger gripping his meat.”
Mrs. Barone
By contrast, the author turns to a less vivid and visceral metaphorical image to describe Pharoah’s teacher, Mrs. Barone. Although important, she is a minor figure in relation to her pupil and as if to emphasize this difference, the author turns to simile for the purpose of comparison rather than the more palpable direct metaphor such as that describing Pharoah above. Mrs. Barone is:
“A short, spunky woman, she spoke so rapidly that it sometimes seemed as if someone had turned up the rpm.”
The System
The anonymity and lack of individualism—for that matter, the lack of humanity—at work in the judicial system in which so many of those in “the graveyard” become clogged is made manifest when a bewildered judge openly asks if they even have a case involving the name of the young man before him waiting to find out where his life will lead next. It is a concrete example of the failure of systemic justice:
“It was as if they were invisible. No one saw them or heard them or cared enough to treat them like human beings.”
