67 pages • 2 hours read
Ghost
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The Silver Bullets
Content Warning: The source material and this guide discuss domestic violence.
The silver bullets represent Castle’s conflicting desires for acceptance and isolation. Castle is embarrassed when Lu mocks his high-top shoes, which aren’t designed for running. However, when he cuts the tops of the shoes off, Shamika and the rest of the class laugh at him. Rather than be mocked again for his shoes, Castle makes the drastic decision to shoplift the silver bullet sneakers from the sporting goods store. He is willing to steal, even though he knows how his mother and Coach will feel about it, rather than ask for help in getting the shoes. He wants to look cool, and he wants shoes that will help him perform at a higher level, but the shoes also represent the absence of mockery for him. When Castle is laughed at, particularly when the laughing is centered on Glass Manor and poverty, he fights. As such, he believes the silver bullets will help him fade into the background and keep him out of fights.
The shoes also symbolize Coach’s unwillingness to compromise ethics in favor of performance. He would rather kick Castle off the team—if he didn’t apologize—than have Castle help the team win with stolen shoes. Bringing the shoes back to the store and apologizing is a major step for Castle, symbolizing his new willingness to confront his problems rather than run away from them. As a result, he is rewarded; Coach buys him the sneakers, and Castle wears them to his first track meet, representing his character development.
The Scream
When Castle thinks about his anger, he says, “For me, the best way to describe it is, I got a lot of scream inside” (34). The scream began building on the night that his father attacked him and his mother. It continued to build while they were hiding in Mr. Charles’s storage room, and again when Castle was locked in there with the door stuck. As such, what Castle calls his “scream” is his trauma, his unaddressed feelings of anger, fear, and sadness over what happened to him.
Castle’s “scream” manifests in different ways. He is often consumed by a directionless rage that gets him into trouble. At the beginning of the novel, he is more likely to lash out at any bullying or criticism than to shake it off and stay out of trouble. The team gives him a productive outlet for the scream, but the more he trains and practices being calm, the more the scream fades inside him. This symbolizes him coming to terms with his trauma rather than suppressing it. By the end of the novel, he has to exercise control less often because positive impulses are replacing his negative ones.
World Records
Castle begins the novel by listing a series of unusual world records, but he does not mock their absurdity. He celebrates them because the world record holders wanted to be the best at something or have the most of something. No matter what the record is, it is a fact that those people were indisputably the best. Castle’s meditation on world records symbolizes his ambition, though he is not sure how to channel it until he joins the track team. When he thinks about playing professional basketball, he doesn’t think about being the next LeBron James; he wants to be the first Castle Cranshaw. Castle has had little control over his life and circumstances, and this shows in his desire to carve his own path and make a mark on the world. As Castle trains with the team and realizes his strengths and limitations, his perspective on winning changes. He still views winning and world records as proof of prowess, but he has learned to find joy in the process of simply improving. As such, his evolving feelings about winning and world records show that training and competing are valuable for their own merits, regardless of victory.
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By Jason Reynolds
