57 pages • 1 hour read
Jeff HobbsThe Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
34 Smith Street
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, substance abuse, and death.
34 Smith Street, the home of Curtis Gamble and his parents, is a recurring motif in the memoir, and it reflects the life trajectory of the Burger Boyz. Initially, the house—and particularly its basement—emphasizes the sense of brotherhood between Rob and his friends, as well as their growing aspirations. The Gamble family’s comfortable and stable home contrasts with the more chaotic and disadvantaged backgrounds of Curtis’s friends. The house is a safe space for the Burger Boyz to study, and it is also where they dream of pursuing college educations and the success and stability that will follow.
Once the Burger Boyz are adults, however, the basement of 34 Smith Street comes to represent their lack of progress. When they return to congregate there, only Rob and Curtis have the college degrees they aspired to, and none have clear career paths. While the Burger Boyz continue to offer one another unconditional support, the fact that they still gather at the same location underlines their failure to escape Newark. Although they brainstorm over business plans involving property investment, these aspirations never come to fruition.
When the Burger Boyz make a dangerous commitment to a get-rich-quick scheme, 34 Smith Street comes to symbolize their unwise choices. The house becomes a travesty of the domestic oasis it once was as Rob creates a drug lab in the basement while Tavarus and Drew live with their young children on the floors above. Rob’s violent death in the basement marks the end of the Burger Boyz’s dreams. The memoir emphasizes the house’s transition from the Gamble family home to a murder scene when the police investigation leaves “a mess of overturned furniture, [and] chalk and fingerprint dust” (382). The house becomes a tragic emblem of lost potential.
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro is a symbol of Rob’s changing aspirations in the memoir. Significantly, his obsession with visiting the Brazilian city begins as he nears the end of his time at Yale. As other students focus on career paths or graduate school, visiting Rio becomes Rob’s one clear goal. Rob’s admiration for the way people applaud on Rio’s beach when the sun goes down is the root of his fascination with the city. He appreciates that the beachgoers in Rio take time to stop and appreciate nature’s beauty, reflecting Rob’s desire for a simpler life devoid of the pressures of making money or climbing the career ladder. Rio represents the possibility of living in the moment, free of the obligations that come with his Yale degree.
Rob’s idealization of Rio is highlighted in Hobbs’s assertion that Rob “didn’t plan this trip so much as dream of it; he seemed to believe that he could simply board a plane, bank over the ocean and land among those hills, then wing it from there” (189). When Rob finally travels there, the city meets his expectations. He revels in the fact that “[for] the first time he could remember, he had nothing to do and no one to worry about” (221). Furthermore, he notes that “the various socioeconomic groups within the city intermingled fluidly in public spaces, and a person like Rob could travel almost anywhere he wanted without fear of confrontation, without having to watch his back” (222). In the United States, Rob constantly feels the pressure of being a Black man: His race makes him feel excluded in Yale, while he is keenly conscious of the dangers of the streets of Newark. In Rio, however, he feels fully accepted and relaxed. Nevertheless, the memoir also emphasizes that Rio can only ever be a transient dream for Rob, as the lifestyle he experiences there on his first vacation is not representative of real life in the city. Rob realizes this after he is robbed on his second visit there, coming to terms with the fact that he had idealized the city to fit with his desire for escape.
Clothing
Clothing is a symbol of Rob’s conflicted identity in the book. When he attends the private elementary school, Mount Carmel, his pink uniform marks him as different from the other neighborhood boys. Consequently, he wears Timberland boots with the laces untied to “make the school uniform look thuggish” (62). The strategy underlines how Rob’s education isolates him from his community and how he attempts to combat this effect by appearing streetwise. His decision to ban the boots when he becomes school president at St. Benedict’s reflects his increasing belief that education must be taken seriously.
At Yale, Rob’s strong attachment to the leather jacket that was a gift from his girlfriend, Zina, also relates to his sense of alienation. Rob’s relationship with Zina, a Jamaican student, provides him with a temporary sense of belonging among the other predominantly white and privileged students. The jacket also demonstrates how Yale’s rarefied environment subtly softens Rob. When Rob visits Newark, Flowy is surprised that his friend does not realize the expensive jacket is likely to make him a target for mugging. Rob’s apparent obliviousness demonstrates he has become less conscious of the survival strategies necessary in his home neighborhood.
After Rob graduates, his clothes indicate his progress or lack thereof. The school T-shirt he is presented with when he leaves his teaching post at St. Benedict’s symbolizes his pupils’ gratitude for the positive difference he has made in their lives. However, Rob’s decision to abandon teaching and take up a manual job at the airport is represented by the orange vest of his uniform. This is reminiscent of his father’s orange jail uniform, emphasizing that Rob is unable to break away from the patterns set by his family and his neighborhood. The Timberland boots once again play an important role in Rob’s adult life when he uses them to smuggle marijuana through airport security. The memoir draws attention to Rob’s repurposing of this footwear, which once symbolized his belief in education and in his dreams of a brighter future. Their reappearance in the memoir underlines Rob’s trajectory from a young man who was full of potential to a self-destructive and directionless adult.
