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 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: The source material contains descriptions of drug abuse and addiction, sexual and physical violence against minors, and animal cruelty. Additionally, the source material endorses dated ideas about sex workers, sexually active women, and persons with substance use disorders. The source text also shows anti-gay bias and is prejudiced against Black and Hispanic people.
In the spring of 1958, David Wilkerson, a pastor in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, reads an article in Life magazine about seven young boys in New York City who are on trial for the murder of Michael Farmer. Although he is disgusted by the details of the case, the plight of the boys moves him. Wilkerson hears a recurring voice in his head telling him to travel to New York and find a way to help the boys, and he decides to follow the calling.
Four years prior, Wilkerson and his wife Gwen arrived in Philipsburg when Wilkerson interviewed for the role of pastor. As they toured the dilapidated parsonage, Gwen saw cockroaches in the kitchen; she later begged Wilkerson to reject the job. That evening, a parishioner interrupted Wilkerson’s sermon to ask him to be their preacher. Wilkerson prayed, asking God to prove His will by having the committee vote for him unanimously and promise to fix the parsonage of their own accord. The committee did exactly that, and Wilkerson took the job.
Despite the church’s success over the years, Wilkerson feels spiritually unsatisfied. When he describes his calling to help the boys from the Life article to his parishioners, they are wary about his idea but nevertheless give him money to travel to New York.
Chapter 2 Summary
Wilkerson drives to New York City with Miles Hoover, the youth pastor at his church. En route, Wilkerson tries to call the district attorney in an attempt to contact the boys, but he is rebuffed. The men lose their way as they enter the city and turn onto the first street the recognize: Broadway. When they reach Times Square, they are scandalized by the nude theaters and sex shows. They eventually find a hotel, and Wilkerson tries to reach the district attorney several more times. Finally, a secretary tells him to speak directly to Judge Davidson, who is handling the case.
The next morning, Wilkerson and Hoover are the last spectators admitted to the courtroom. They sit next to a man who believes that the boys should be executed quickly. Wilkerson learns that the boys threated the judge’s life and that court-appointed lawyers are representing them. A young girl is on the stand; a fellow-spectator tells Wilkerson that she is one of the boys’ “whore.” The girl correctly identifies the murder weapon. When court adjourns, Wilkerson runs to the bench to speak to the judge. He is detained by police and removed from the court. Although the police want to press charges, Judge Davidson tells Wilkerson he can leave if he promises not to return. As Wilkerson and Hoover are leaving, photographers goad Wilkerson into holding up his Bible. Dejected and embarrassed, Wilkerson and Hoover leave New York City.
Chapter 3 Summary
Wilkerson decides to stop in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to visit his parents. When he arrives, he discovers that newspapers have already picked up the story of his ejection from court, painting him as a wild-eyed preacher. Wilkerson’s father warns that he may lose his ordination as a result of the scandal. His mother encourages him to insist that he didn’t do anything wrong and to say that God moves in mysterious ways.
Wilkerson faces significant criticism from town officials and fellow pastors, but his parishioners are mostly kind and understanding. He admits that he has been humbled. Soon after, he feels another powerful calling to go to New York. The calling is so persistent that he decides to follow it. Once again, his parishioners give Wilkerson the money that he needs.
When Wilkerson and Hoover arrive in the city, Wilkerson feels called to stop in a random neighborhood. While walking, he encounters a group of teenage boys who recognize him from the newspaper articles. A boy named Tommy introduces himself as the president of their gang, the Rebels. Most of the boys accept Wilkerson because he, like them, has issues with the police. However, a boy named Willie threatens Wilkerson with a knife. Tommy tells another teen to take Wilkerson to the clubhouse of another gang, called Grand Gangsters, Incorporated, for safety. While there, Wilkerson preaches to the gang, telling them that they are loved. He also meets an intravenous heroin user named Maria who feels that her life is hopeless.
Chapter 4 Summary
When Wilkerson returns to his car, he is sure of God’s purpose for the embarrassing photo in the newspaper: Without it, he never would have had the opportunity to talk to the Rebels. He returns to the district attorney’s office and finds out that without Judge Davidson’s permission, his only chance of seeing the boys is to get permission from all seven of their families. He only knows the name of one boy, leader Luis Alvarez. Wilkerson calls every family with that name in the phonebook, but he isn’t successful in finding Luis’s family. He asks God to guide him to the families so he can help the boys.
Wilkerson and Hoover drive around Central Park until Wilkerson feels called to stop. They pull into the first open spot, in front of a house with a group of teenage boys sitting on the stoop. Wilkerson learns that the Alvarez family lives in that very house, and he feels that God has answered his prayer. Luis’s father recognizes Wilkerson and says that he has prayed for him. He gives Wilkerson permission to visit Luis, but he does not know the other families. On his way out of the building, Wilkerson meets Angelo, another member of the gang, who takes him to obtain signatures from the rest of the families. However, the prison’s chaplain blocks Wilkerson from visiting the boys, claiming that he is a spiritual threat. Frustrated and disappointed, Wilkerson decides to visit his grandfather for advice.
Chapter 5 Summary
As he drives to visit his grandfather, Wilkerson thinks about his grandfather’s life. Born in Cleveland, Tennessee, his grandfather became a circuit-riding preacher at the age of 20, traveling from town to town to deliver barn-burning sermons. In one memorable instance, he set off sparklers during a sermon on hell so that smoke billowed behind him.
Wilkerson’s father grew up frustrated by his lack of a permanent home, and he eventually took a job in an established church in a nice neighborhood. When Wilkerson’s grandfather visited, he found the church’s pride and decorum disturbing, and he told the congregants to clap and sing loudly with the windows open. Despite their initial resistance to his grandfather’s ideas, the church and the neighborhood eventually viewed the noisy sermon as a success. Wilkerson’s grandfather encouraged the teenaged Wilkerson to pray publicly and specifically for what he wanted. When Wilkerson’s father fell deathly ill, Wilkerson prayed in front of the doctors for his father’s life to be spared. Miraculously, Wilkerson’s father recovered.
When Wilkerson reaches his grandfather’s house, his grandfather carefully listens to Wilkerson’s dilemma. He tells Wilkerson that God is not calling him to help only the seven boys on trial, but rather all the lost boys in New York City. He warns Wilkerson that he is going to encounter true evil and sinfulness in these boys. However, he encourages him to focus on the change at the heart of the Gospels and to see the boys’ potential.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
The early chapters of The Cross and the Switchblade establish Wilkerson’s mission in New York City as being divinely inspired. In Chapter 1, Wilkerson frames himself as a passive participant in the events that begin the story: After his “attention [is] caught by the eyes” (11) of the boys in the Life magazine article, the idea to go to New York “[springs] suddenly into [his] head—full blown” (12). Wilkerson’s use of passive and transitive verbs in these excerpts emphasizes that he does not actively make the decision to travel to New York City—rather, God leads him to do so. Similarly, when the district attorney refuses to give him details about the boys arrested in the Michael Farmer case, Wilkerson prays to God to “lead where [they] must go, for [they] do not know” (42). After this, Wilkerson drives around New York City until he feels an “incomprehensible urge to get out of the car” (42), and he discovers that he has been guided to stop at Luis Alvarez’s house. Wilkerson explicitly identifies this as an “answered prayer,” again implying that God is guiding his mission. Luis Alvarez’s father also attributes this to God, telling Wilkerson that “God brought [him] here” (44). The inclusion of these episodes early in the book suggest that David Wilkerson’s journey to New York City is the result of divine intervention and that God is actively answering his prayers. In this way, Wilkerson establishes himself as an instrument of God.
New York City offers an important backdrop to Wilkerson’s missionary work, and in the early chapters, he presents it as a violent, highly sexualized city. New York is the antithesis to Wilkerson’s home in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania. When he hears the call, he thinks, “Me? Go to New York? A country preacher barge into a situation he knows less than nothing about?” (12). By drawing attention to the contrast between his country roots and the chaos of New York City, Wilkerson adds a sense of drama and danger to his mission. He also seeks to emphasize the personal challenges this mission throws his way by stressing that he will be entering unfamiliar territory and that he is nervous about it, thereby underscoring the theme of The Sacrifices Necessary for Missionary Work. Wilkerson makes it clear that he is uncomfortable with New York City’s corruption and explicit sexuality. The first time he drives through Times Square, he thinks fondly of “quiet evenings in Philipsburg” while he takes in “the marquees: ‘Naked Secrets,’ ‘Loveless Love,’ ‘Teen-age Girl of the Night,’ ‘Shame.’” (23). These details show that Wilkerson is out of place and uneasy in the city, which contrasts with the quiet purity of Philipsburg, manifested in Wilkerson himself.
While Wilkerson portrays New York City as a loud, dirty, violent place, Wilkerson’s first depictions of the teen gang members he encounters highlight their poverty and loneliness, pointing out The Societal Roots of Gang Violence. On his first night in New York, Wilkerson watches disapprovingly from his hotel room as “a gust of wind [blows] clouds of trash and newspapers around the corner” and “a group of teenagers [are] huddled around an open fire across the street” (24). While Wilkerson is safe indoors, the teens are outside braving the wind and the cold, their environment beset by trash. Like the city itself, they seem neglected. Later, a teen girl affiliated with the gang called the Rebels walks with Wilkerson “past a pile of vodka bottles” to a teen gang clubhouse (38). The door is guarded by “a child, a little girl in her teens” (38). Inside, teenagers are making out, drinking, and doing drugs. Wilkerson’s descriptions show a corrupt, adult world—the “pile of vodka bottles” suggesting adult excess—inhabited by children like the “little girl in her teens” (38), who have been forced to grow up too quickly because there seems to be no one to look after them. This backdrop is used to demonstrate the necessity of Wilkerson’s mission to preach in the city.
