49 pages • 1 hour read
Russell BanksRule of the Bone
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Lingering Effects of Sexual Violence
Bone’s history of sexual abuse by his stepfather is at the root of what might traditionally be called his behavioral issues. At the beginning of the novel, he is impulsively angry, he uses marijuana excessively, and he has taken to committing petty crime. He also is unwilling to go into details of his experiences with his stepfather at the beginning of the novel, but he slowly opens up about it over the course of his narration. The violence he’s experienced causes him to feel intense shame, so much so that he cannot confess it to his mother, leading to the dissolution of their relationship. It also causes him to lash out whenever he’s in a situation that reminds him of his stepfather or makes him feel like he’s alone in the world.
Tellingly, he’s willing to subject himself to further abuse if it means he can rescue Rose from Buster Brown, but he also doesn’t understand the impact this would have on him. When he sees the mannequins, which are somehow both sexual and prepubescent to him, he realizes he can’t do it; though he understands sexual violence from adults, he’s been left unequipped to deal with it, even when faced with it directly. Bone also has an impulse to be attracted to and simultaneously repulsed by powerful men such as Bruce, and he’s used to being powerless around them. It’s only once he connects with I-Man and starts to learn of his own value that he begins to take action with purpose. Sexual violence has silenced him in his home, robbed him of any sense of self, and stunted him emotionally, even as it makes him someone who is eager to enter the adult world before he’s ready.
Coming-of-Age
Bone chooses his new name midway through the novel, and this comes to represent his journey as a brand-new beggar in the world. Bone comes from a broken family, and he’s been told that he’s the source of that brokenness, even though he’s a wounded 14-year-old boy. “Chappie” was that wounded boy, but “Bone” is a criminal, and in adopting that identity, he is carving out space for himself that exists outside of the expected social norms. What he doesn’t realize in the first half of the novel is that the very idea of being a criminal is still within the system that he longs to reject.
It's through meeting I-Man that he starts to unpack this idea, and he begins to understand that being a fully-realized person requires developing a sense of self that exists outside of the expectations and norms that have been placed on him. At the end of the novel, he no longer cares about being a criminal; he’s worried that he’s a sinner, having sold out his friend. This sense of personal loyalty to self and friends is what comes to be of the most importance to Bone, and this comes after actively rejecting his family, his white heritage, his attempt to be a Rastafarian, and his biological father. He learns that even if he needs to exist within those contexts at times, he can still live by his own code within them.
Another key to this theme is the way the novel purposefully undermines its own premise as a picaresque and a coming-of-age novel: At the start of the book, Bone is a wayward, troubled teen who needs a family, and it is pitched as the beginning of a downward spiral, with Bone taking small steps toward criminality. One might expect this downward trend to end either in tragedy or in a rock-bottom moment that allows him to return home; instead, Bone’s rock-bottom moment is trying to return home, and he finds peace, family, and a sense of purpose by continuing to be a wayward teen with I-Man. His meeting with his father promises a similar redemption trope that is dashed, as he has no desire to stay with his father when he learns what he’s really like. Bone comes of age not through growing into the man others expect him to be, but by rejecting those expectations and having no intention of returning to “normal” society.
Rastafarianism and Whiteness
Rastafarianism is a religious and social movement that was started by Black Jamaicans in the 1930s, and it is explicitly rooted in the idea that Black people are the chosen people. Bone recognizes this tension early in the book when he speaks of white teens with dreadlocks who are obsessed with reggae music, and he is scornful of them. However, his relationship with I-Man means that he is in close, constant contact with the religion and its tenets, and I-Man is the first person in Bone’s life who cares for him on his own terms. This sets Bone on a complicated trajectory that he struggles with: On the one hand, I-Man is family to him, and his beliefs seem genuine and bring I-Man peace; on the other hand, Bone believes that there’s no way those beliefs can belong to him, even as he begins to adopt them.
This implicit tension motivates most of Bone’s behavior in Jamaica under I-Man’s care, as he’s ready to be subservient and respectful of the people, particularly when is in Accompong, which has a history of being liberated from white slaveowners. He’s aware that he doesn’t belong, but he allows I-Man to show him how to dreadlock his hair, and he takes on the culture more fully, even participating in the ritual that leads to his vision.
The vision is where this tension comes to a head, as Bone first experiences himself as a Black Jamaican slave, travelling through a kaleidoscopic tour of white violence being rained down on him and others. However, at the end of his vision, he cannot fully embrace Blackness, choosing to stay behind to try and save a small white boy when his friends are leaving. This proves to be his undoing in the vision, and he realizes that he can be neither. He later realizes that he can adopt parts of I-Man’s philosophy as long as he doesn’t do it in a way that erases his own history and privilege
The novel questions what race and culture mean in interpersonal relationships. As a narrator, Bone is savvy enough to admit he doesn’t have clear answers, but he knows that he felt more at home with I-Man than he did with anyone else.
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