After the Shot Drops

Nasir is the novel’s other primary protagonist. He is the only child of two loving parents. His father is Black and a former serviceman in the United States Air Force, and he currently teaches elementary school. His mother is an immigrant from the Philippines. Nasir is eligible to have his college education paid for by his father’s GI Bill, so he does not face the same financial pressures as Bunny’s family. Still, he remains part of the working class and grows up and lives in the same impoverished neighborhood in Whitman as Bunny.

Nasir is studious, responsible, and compassionate. He feels responsible for making the world a better place and frequently feels angry about the unfairness and injustice he sees every day. He feels especially resentful on behalf of his friend and cousin, Wallace. When he asks his parents if Wallace can live with them, they say no, and he seethes:

Anger courses through me. Anger at Wallace’s landlord. Anger at his shitty parents. Anger at my own parents, my own small house. Anger at Bunny, St. Sebastian’s, and the unfairness of this world that tells us to help each other but thrives on is not helping each other (43).

Although he recognizes that Wallace’s behaviors undermine his own chances to succeed and break the Trap of Poverty, he is also one of few people to acknowledge that Wallace faces an avalanche of disadvantages that few people could shoulder alone. When thinking of Wallace’s situation, Nasir muses, “You wish the world would throw him a break. Instead it keeps on trying to break him” (17). He is committed to single-handedly tipping the scales of justice in Wallace’s favor, even when, at its most extreme, that entails purposefully sabotaging his best friend, Bunny.

Throughout the novel, Nasir experiences internal conflict and ambivalence about his attempts to help Wallace. On the one hand, he deeply respects Bunny’s talent and work ethic and is loath to sabotage the success that Bunny deserves. On the other hand, he sees the relative advantages Bunny has when compared to Wallace—a loving, supportive family and innate athletic ability—and chafes at a world that bestows even more benefits on him, from a scholarship to St. Sebastian’s to free shoes and equipment from Nike. Although he routinely justifies his attempts to help Wallace throughout the novel, he becomes increasingly convinced that Wallace needs to take personal responsibility for his own actions, especially when they harm other people. Nasir struggles with the question of who is finally to blame for Wallace’s fate, and by the novel’s end, he finds no easy answers.

Wallace is a senior at Whitman high school and the novel’s antagonist. He is the victim of tragic circumstances beyond his control; his mother, dealing with drug addiction, has disappeared, and his father is in prison. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment with his grandmother, whom he calls G, and sleeps on a threadbare couch in the living room. Although his grandmother has been a tenant in this building for decades, she is being evicted due to rising rents caused by gentrification.

Wallace, however, always compounds his troubles with his own choices and bad behaviors, including smoking, taking a lackadaisical attitude toward school, placing irresponsible bets, and, ultimately, shooting Bunny. Whereas Bunny represents the positive aspects of self-focus, Wallace represents the pitfalls; his selfish actions frequently harm him and others. He does not avail himself of the help Nasir tries to provide and instead takes advantage of him by copying his homework, making him pay for their snacks at the theater, and pressuring him to dig up dirt on Bunny. He never takes Nasir’s advice to find a job or stop placing bets seriously.

At the same time, Wallace has a compassionate side to him. He takes care of his grandmother by bringing her medication from the pharmacy. He uses the money he gets from selling a fraudulent tip to pay the rent, knowing that if he doesn’t spend it immediately, he will waste it in some other way. He takes in a stray kitten and tenderly cares for it, telling Nasir, “Makes me mad thinking about someone abandoning a little thing like that…What’s wrong with people?” (233) Like Nasir, Wallace has a sensitive side and is angry at the lack of care and compassion people show to the world’s weakest creatures.

By the novel’s end, however, Wallace implodes. Before he shoots Bunny, Nasir looks in his eyes and makes the following observation: “In his eyes, I see a lifetime of rage, of desperation, of hopelessness. He isn’t trying to solve anything. He’s out to destroy” (303). Even with Nasir’s dedicated help, Wallace has yielded to the popular opinion that he is a lost cause. Who is most responsible for his self-destruction is one of the novel’s main questions.

Keyona is a sophomore at Whitman High and Bunny’s girlfriend. She is a strong female adolescent capable of self-advocating and asserting a feminist point of view, which she does when she tells Bunny that she does not belong to Nasir despite his crush; he does not get “dibs” on her just because he liked her first. She convinces Bunny not to break up with her on account of Nasir because she is free to choose whom she wants to date and she freely chose Bunny.

Like Bunny, Keyona is a disciplined athlete and a conscientious student. She promotes the perspective that Wallace alone is responsible for his successes and failures. She admonishes Nasir that he is not doing Wallace any favors by allowing him to copy off his homework because he won’t learn “that he needs to work hard to accomplish something” (35). When Nasir tries to highlight Wallace’s societal disadvantages, she uses the example of her father to prove that people can grow up with nothing and go on to make something of themselves. Nasir notes that she omits how her father had help along the way and that the business he created isn’t doing very well. Nonetheless, Keyona reserves very little sympathy for characters such as Wallace.

Both protagonists have the benefit of two loving and supportive parents who are hard-working and dedicated members of their community. Mr. Thompson owns a failing bookstore, Word Up, which was once an important gathering place. He frequently has to miss Bunny’s games because he works the closing shifts; his co-owner and business partner, Zaire, has refused to work at night since the store got robbed.

The parents frequently offer sound advice and wisdom to their children. Mrs. Blake tells Nasir a proverb in Tagalog that translates to “A broom is sturdy because its strands are tightly wound” (19). By this, she means that families and communities that help each other are strong; this confuses Nasir when his parents refuse to help Wallace, who is also family. Mr. Blake acknowledges that the world isn’t fair but that people have to play the hand they are dealt. He also tells Nasir, “Sometimes you think you are helping someone when you’re doing the exact opposite. Sometimes the best thing to do is to let them figure it out on their own” (44). Like Keyona, the adults in the novel generally take the position that it isn’t their responsibility to help people like Wallace since he doesn’t seem willing to help himself.