40 pages • 1 hour read
Christine Pride, Jo PiazzaWe Are Not Like Them
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
PrologueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
The Prologue is told from the third-person perspective of 14-year-old Justin Dwyer in the moments after he has been shot. Justin is amazed that the bullets feel different than he imagined—not hot, but cold. He is also surprised by how little blood there is. He hears heavy footprints coming his way. He recalls how he was listening to music, heard shouting, and instinctively reached into his pocket to turn it off: “He knew better. No sudden movements. Don’t be a threat. Do what they say” (1). His mom had told him this, and he thinks now of her, imagining the picture she will choose to have on the news when Riley Wilson, with her pretty lips and smooth voice, explains what happened on Channel Five. He thinks then of the things he will miss out on: “drive a car, see the ocean, have sex” (2). He tries to stop thinking of his mother and the grief she will have, especially after his father’s death. She will have no one. The person holding his hand encourages him to hang on. Justin wants to tell him his name so he isn’t alone but instead focuses on one tiny star in the sky.
Prologue Analysis
The readers are witnesses to the scene of Justin’s murder in the brief but grim Prologue, which shows Justin as more than just the victim and also introduces the idea that he should have known better. As a Black boy, he knows he walks around the world as a threat, and even though he didn’t see the police were behind him, he should have known better than to reach into his pocket. This point sets up two ideologies in the novel: first, the recursiveness of this violence, and second, the Black community's awareness of this violence. Justin explains the bullets don’t feel like he thought they would and, “as a Black boy growing up in this neighborhood, he’d imagined it” (1). This type of violence is all too common and has become a part of this community. They understand how race makes them a target, and they will have to play along with the system or be punished by it.
The Prologue also introduces the compassion of Kevin, the officer who shot Justin, although we don’t know it is him at the time. The authors recount the panic in the officers’ voices, the immediate understanding they have done something wrong they can’t take back, and the encouragement that Kevin gives as he waits with Justin for the ambulance. While this section humanizes Justin, it also encourages sympathy for Kevin by revealing the situation’s complexity.
The third-person point of view contrasts to the first-person point of view in the subsequent chapters from Jenny and Riley. Although the point of telling is close to Justin, the third-person narrative creates some distance between him and the reader. The distance replicates his death, inaccessible to the reader even as we watch him collapse.
