The Boy In The Black Suit Character Analysis

“The Boy in the Black Suit” is a realistic fiction story by the new young adult author Jason Reynolds. Reynolds has written a number of other novels for young readers in the past couple of years including “Ghost” and “When I Was the Greatest.” “The Boy in the Black Suit” is about a teenager named Matt that wants his life to be like it was before his mom died. He soon gets a job at a local funeral home and starts watching mourners at the funerals. This makes him feel that he isn’t the only one that is feeling the way he is. During one of the funerals, he meets a girl that strikes him as strong and independent, even if she has just lost her grandma, and he wants to learn from her. Based on evidence from the text, the theme of this story is that

Ray, Matt and Mr. Ray start playing a card game together in his, Mr. Ray’s basement. While they are in the basement, Mr. Ray says: “I can lose and lose and I don’t know why. But there’s nothing I can do but just keep flipping the cards. Eventually, I’ll win again. As long as you got cards to keep turning, you’re fine. Now that’s life,” (Page 109). In this part of the story, Mr. Ray uses the game cards to represent moving on in life and trying your hardest to focus of the happy things in it. He says that eventually something good will happen to you that causes you not to feel so bad for a little bit, but until that happens, until you move on, all you have to do it keep going and trying your hardest in life to be the best you can be. This is a really powerful message and can really connect to anyone. If anyone is going through a hard time, whether it has to do with school and your friends or the death of someone important to you, it can really apply to that person, especially Matt and Mr. Ray in this case. This connects to the theme of you always need to focus of the happy things in life a lot because it talks about that there will always be another happy time, no matter how sad and depressing life might feel in one

In the story, it shows this because when Matt goes to funerals and watches the person closest to the deceased person to see how they react to the funeral and things being said. This theme is supported of page 114 when it says, “I searched for that person-almost always sitting in the front-and watched them deal. Saw them rock back and forth, the sound of their hearts begging for help in a room full of uncomfortable people who want to be helpful, but just don’t know how. Because they can’t help. Nothing helps.” This supports this theme because it talks about how some people mourn and show their feelings. Matt says that this is the way he sees people mourn the most, but there are always different ways, like in the way stated on page 117 when it says: “Everyone way laughing, holding their guts and their sides as these actors gave Mr. Price his final wish, and acted out his funeral play, a comedy, at his funeral. At the end of it all his wife got up to speak. Her smile was big and you could tell that she had had quite a laugh herself.” This shows that some people cry when they mourn people they love, but some people worship their lives and work and laugh and smile as a way to mourn and remember a