The Trees

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-20

Chapters 21-42

Chapters 43-64

Chapters 65-86

Chapters 87-108

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Endemic and Institutionalized Racism in America

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses the use of racial slurs, racial violence, racial hatred, lynchings, and other forms of racist behavior.

Everett’s novel explores the long-term ramifications of endemic and institutionalized racism in America. Money, Mississippi, is a setting embedded with racism. Black people in Money live in a single, unofficially segregated neighborhood. White people in Money use racial slurs such as the n-word on a regular basis; the white community is united in little beyond their shared racism. Everett’s depiction of contemporary Money reads like a historical novel because of the overt racism and flippant attitude the white people of Money have toward Black people. When Jetty meets Ed and Jim, he warns them that Money is not in the 21st century, indicating that the town acts as a time capsule for the worst traits of American racism.

The white people of Money have been raised to be racist and repeat the cycles of racism from their parents. Most of the white male characters in this novel were raised by or are KKK members. These white characters fear the Black population of Money, and the detectives, for the past abuse of enslavement, Jim Crow, lynchings, and the modern-day institutionalized racism of police brutality and the prison-industrial complex. When the murders begin, the white people of Money are convinced that a Black ghost or demon haunts them and exacts revenge; the idea of retributive haunting is an admission that wrong has been done, yet there is no desire in Money to reconcile with that wrong. The white people of Money do not want to be held responsible for that, nor do they want to be confronted by the people they’ve helped to oppress.

The vengeful murders of white racists in this novel are a subversion of white supremacy and the history of racial violence in America through legal institutions. In the 19th and 20th centuries, lynchings were often public and everybody knew who had committed these murders in the community. Local sheriff departments protected the white men who committed lynchings, and often participated in the lynching themselves. Like these historical lynchings, the undead mobs appear and kill their targets with no hope of being brought to court; the undead are bulletproof, much like the white lynchers who feared no physical violence for their murders. Due to the historical connections between lynchings and law enforcement, Mama Z does not trust American law enforcement regardless of the officer’s skin color. Sheriff Jetty has also helped to cover up the murders of Black men at the hands of white men, though he wastes no time in trying to find out who murdered Wheat and Junior Junior, two white men. Everett juxtaposes past and present to argue that little has changed in the institutionalized racism from Emmett Till’s time to the early 21st century.

Justice Versus Revenge

The Trees explores the consequences of Endemic and Institutionalized Racism in America by interrogating traditional notions of justice and revenge. Lynchers saw themselves as vigilantes who brought justice to their communities. They were rarely brought to justice. Vigilantism is a core concern in the novel, particularly when many of the Black characters have concrete historical reasons to distrust law enforcement. Gertrude and her organization consider themselves vigilantes seeking extrajudicial justice, like Till’s murderers. The replication of lynching tactics in the murders occurring in this novel is purposeful, designed to evoke the imagery of terrorism usually wrought on the Black community. While the novel draws parallels between Mama Z and Gertrude’s actions, the vigilantism of lynchers and Gertrude’s organization are not equivocated. Gertrude and Mama Z’s distrust of law enforcement is validated repeatedly: Jetty covers up the murder of a Black man, and the lynching record and Till’s story confirm Jetty’s fictitious actions. If the entire judicial system is suspect, then characters like Gertrude and Mama Z can’t believe in the official justice system. Without an official justice system and due process of law to believe in, the only recourse left to an individual is vigilantism. The white populace of Money, and elsewhere, believe in this justice system. Everett’s use of parallels between Till’s lynchings and the practices of the Black vigilantes racializes the concepts of justice and revenge; how one benefits from and views racist institutions shape how one views concepts like justice and revenge.

Like war, the symbolic lynchings in Money do not neatly fix racism and instead inflame the prophecy of a “race war” touted by extremist racist organizations like the KKK. White people arm themselves, and even the President of the United States encourages his people to defend themselves against Black people while using racial slurs and exacerbating tensions between white and Black people. While the concepts of revenge and justice are relativized through the lens of racism, white society at large within the novel is easily stoked to Till-era levels of paranoia about Black people, threatening to create a cycle of paranoid retributive killings. For Mama Z, avenging the deaths of the victims of lynching is not just a battle tactic. Mama Z, who is depicted as the wisest character for her position as a “root doctor,” treats this reaction by white people as an inevitability. The narrative does not draw a precise conclusion for the reader on the precise line between justice and revenge, or whether the two concepts are wholly separate. The open ending of the novel invites readers to consider Mama Z’s perspective as a battle tactician and where the line may lie between justice and revenge.

The Importance of Documenting History

History is undocumented and exits public consciousness when those who write and record history are ashamed of certain historical stories. Historical practices and events that have shaped our present day like lynching are often unspoken and unrecorded because such things may either emotionally upset those in power under the status quo or threaten the power of the status quo. Everett’s portrayal of Money argues that such a town wishes to forget its past associations with lynching and the KKK because of the guilt such history produces.

Damon and Mama Z are key figures in documenting a history that would otherwise disappear under the directive of white historians. There are many victims of lynching who are unidentified. As Mama Z notes, this anonymity means that more than their lives were taken from them. Damon writes out the names of the victims because that is his way of giving them back some of their dignity, which literally resurrects them briefly. Damon’s desire to humanize the dead is a tender action that leads to violent results. The symbolic contradiction between Damon’s tenderness and the rage of the dead suggests that this anger must be processed through the historical record and cannot be hidden, despite Damon’s reputation as a detached scholar.

In Money, Mississippi, history permeates the culture. Carolyn Bryant (Granny C) is haunted by her accusation of Emmett Till. Sheriff Jetty and Reverend Fondle recall the memories of their affiliations with the KKK. Money is a microcosm of America that Everett uses to unveil the deep connections between white people today and the racist actions of their ancestors only a few decades past. Charlene worries that her husband was a closeted gay man and died in a tragic love affair before she worries about her husband’s connections to one of the most brutal lynchings in recorded history. The white people of Money, when forced to look at their history, conjure up ideas of ghosts and demons that haunt them. Their history is metaphorically turned into a ghost, which stalks them and murders them. The fantastical bogeyman of the “Black Ghost” is Everett’s paradigm for white America’s inability to reconcile with history. Where the Black characters in Money document history regardless of how painful it is, the white characters of Money turn history into a fantastical, capricious, and retributive spirit that kills them for no reason.