Overview: The Nickel Boys is a devastating story of injustice, leveled at especially vulnerable members of society – children, and most of them, children from broken if not non-existent homes. Throughout the novel, we read again and again of terrible miscarriages of justice, of the sheer absence of justice in the boys’ day to day lives, and of the cost of such injustice to their present and future lives. The question we must ask is this: Where can justice be found?
Prompt: Write a well-organized, effectively argued and supported essay responding to the following prompt: Is there any justice in The Nickel Boys? Are there any moments of justice in the novel, in the lives of the characters, if not officially, then unofficially – acts of justice that are performed despite everything? Or: Is the world of The Nickel Boys completely bereft of justice?
