The Guardian

Lester, Julius. 2008. The guardian. New York: Amistad. ISBN 9780061558900

Plot Summary

It is the summer of 1946 in a small, deeply segregated, southern town. Bert, the local storekeeper, is training his 14-year-old son, Ansel, to take over the family store, even though he worries that Ansel is too much like his mother and does not understand what it means to be white. Ansel and his best friend Willie, a black boy hired to help out at the store, take every chance they can find to go fishing together. Ansel is not sure he wants to run the store, but he cannot imagine a different future.

When Willie’s father is accused of a horrible crime, a crime that Bert and Ansel know he is innocent of, the townspeople gather for a lynching. Ansel tries to get Bert to tell the townspeople that the crime was committed by the white landowner’s son, but Bert refuses and forces Ansel to get the rope. In the aftermath of the lynching, Ansel is given a chance to escape the soul-killing racism of the small town. However, Ansel can never escape his deep shame, and he can never repair the friendship he destroyed when he kept silent and watched Willie’s father hang.

Critical Analysis (Including Cultural Markers)

Lester uses the powerful imagery of a tree silently bearing a shame so deep that it is a relief when it is struck down by lightening to foreshadow the deep shame that will follow Ansel throughout his life. The theme of the novel is best expressed through something Willie’s father once told him:

“Don’t never let yourself be angry with white folks. Us niggers, we know things are in a bad way. But the white folks? They don’t know that by keeping us down in a ditch, they got to be right here in the ditch with us. And because they don’t know that, they worse off than we are.”

The novel explores the effects of deeply ingrained racism, a racism that caused people to treat the lynching of a black man like a day at the county fair.

Although the story is ostensibly about Ansel, and the prologue and epilogue are written from Ansel’s first-person point of view, the use of an omniscient third-person narrative throughout the rest of the story allows for insights into the motivations of a variety of characters. The most telling insights come from Ansel’s and Willie’s differing perspectives. Ansel feels discomfort at the fact that he is supposed to address Willie’s father as “Big Willie”, when Willie has to address Ansel as “Master Ansel” even in private. Another telling insight is in the different reactions of the boys when Esther Davis, the landowner’s sister who hopes to rescue both boys from the cancerous racism of the town, asks them what they would like to be when they grow up. Ansel is confused by the question and cannot think of an answer, he has never considered the possibility of doing anything other than following in his father’s footsteps. Willie, on the other hand, quickly answers “A doctor”, not because he has ever dreamed of a life that would allow for that possibility, but because he knows his survival depends upon being able to understand and give white people the answers that they want.

An author’s note at the end of the book explains Lester’s reason for writing about a lynching from a white boy’s point of view. Lester also provides a brief history of lynching in America. An appendix provides chilling statistics on the number of lynchings in America, by state and by race, from 1882-1968.

Review Excerpts

Publishers Weekly: “Focusing on the repercussions of white guilt, the author's understated, haunting prose is as compelling as it is dark; if the characterizations tend toward the extreme, the story nonetheless leaves a deep impression.”

School Library Journal: “Poignant and powerful phrasing overshadows spare character development and helps satisfy readers' desire to explore the deeper motivations for some behaviors. The understated violence, coupled with reflections on lynching, heightens the horror..”

Connections

Check out the 2006 Coretta Scott King Honor and 2006 Michael L. Printz Honor book about the lynching of Emmett Till:

 Nelson, Marilyn. 2005. A wreath for Emmett Till. New York: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children. ISBN 9780618397525