Feathers

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death, pregnancy loss, racism, and bullying.

“His coming into our classroom that morning was the only new thing. Everything else was the same way it’d always been. The snow coming down. Ms. Johnson looking out the window, then after a moment, nodding. The class cheering because she was going to let us go out into the school yard at lunchtime. It had been that way for days and days.”

The repetition in the phrase “days and days” underlines the consistency of Frannie and her sixth-grade classmates’ routine. This constancy builds up to the novel’s inciting incident—the unexpected arrival of her new classmate, the “only new thing” that disrupts the status quo and sets the story in motion. The passage’s fragments offer glimpses into the class’s routine and set the scene through visual imagery, such as the “snow coming down,” and auditory imagery, such as the students’ “cheering.”

“And then, just before the lunch bell rang, he walked into our classroom. Stepped through that door white and softly as the snow. The class got quiet and the boy reached into his pocket and pulled something out. A note for you, Ms. Johnson, the boy said. And the way his voice sounded, all new and soft in the room, made most of the class laugh out loud. But Ms. Johnson gave us a look and the class got quiet.”

The simile likening the new student to snow operates on multiple levels. The comparison conveys his classmates’ assumption that he is white based on his appearance, and it also expresses his quiet, gentle nature. Woodson’s diction further emphasizes this gentleness with words like “soft” and “softly.” The scene’s hushed atmosphere, broken only by a brief burst of laughter, shows the students’ surprise and confusion upon first seeing the Jesus Boy.

“The boy was pale and his hair was long—almost to his back. And curly—like my own brother’s hair but Mama would never let Sean’s hair grow that long. And he was skinny too. Tall and skinny with white, white hands hanging down below his coat sleeves. Skinny white neck showing above his collar.”

The repetition of the word “white” reflects Frannie’s belief that the new student is Caucasian and her astonishment at seeing a student who appears white in her otherwise all-Black school.