Same Kind Of Different As Me

“It would have been perfect if I could have had […] my whole 1963 Haltom High graduating class, lined up parade-style so they could all see how I’d risen above my lower-middle-class upbringing. Looking back, I’m surprised I made it to the airfield that day, since I’d spent the whole ten-mile trip from home admiring myself in the rearview mirror.” 

For much of his life, Ron equates material success with personal fulfillment. However, by referring to his surprise at making it to the airfield because he was looking at himself in the rearview mirror, he forecasts the psychological changes he undergoes over the course of the book. 

“An ought’s an ought, and a figger’s a figger, all for the white man, and none for the nigger.” 

A significant portion of the book examines the Deep South’s post-Civil War plantation system from Denver’s point of view as a sharecropper. While freeing slaves in the nineteenth century was meant to change the white-black social order, very little changed for black rural farmworkers, who still found themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder. As Denver notes throughout, black sharecroppers were always at the mercy of “the Man,” who always had the upper hand.  

“In the 1950s, the Southern social order was as plain to the eye as charcoal in a snowbank. But from the perspective of a small fair-skinned boy, it was about as much a topic for considered thought as breathing in and out.” 

Hindsight is 20/20, which makes America’s racial disparities and inequalities in the mid-twentieth century abundantly and painfully clear to us today. As Ron notes, however, at the time all this was going on, especially for him as a boy, this was just the world he found himself in, and he didn’t give it any thought one way or the other. As much as the book is about Ron’s spiritual awakening, another equally important part is about him overcoming the racial prejudices of the society in which he was raised.  

“All good medicine tastes bad!”

While Denver’s aunt is referring to the medicine she gives him when he’s sick, this idea becomes a metaphor applicable throughout the book. As Denver becomes reintegrated into the world thanks to Deborah, he fights it the whole way, because he doesn’t like the way it makes him feel. At the same time, Ron is continually resistant to taking the steps necessary for his spiritual awakening as he’d often rather make a hefty monetary donation to a good cause and go back to his regularly-scheduled life. 

“I don’t remember who won or lost the football game, or even the name of the opposing team. I only remember feeling as if Bozo the Clown had died and I’d inherited his clothes.” 

Ron shows up for a blind date with a TCU sorority girl only to discover his clothes, despite his best efforts ahead of time, are woefully inadequate for the occasion. At this point in his life, he’s more interested in dating girls for how they look as opposed to who they are, and he also bases his own self-worth on how he’s perceived by others. These moments become touchstones to demonstrate the changes he undergoes.  

“I know what it’s like to get beat down for bein born with different-colored skin. And I know what it’s like to walk around with my eyes down low to keep it from happening again.” 

Denver’s fate growing up in the Deep South is to always be seen as inferior because of being born with black. In contrast to Ron’s experience of wearing the wrong clothes on his blind date, which he quickly remedies by buying the right outfit, there is nothing Denver can do to change his situation. The result is an internalized despair that isolates him more and more until he meets Deborah. 

“I was born a Christian […] My daddy paved the parking lot at the Snyder Methodist Church, and that’s good enough for me!” 

For mainstream Protestants, the idea of being a “Christian” is typically based on having been baptized as a child in addition to going to church (and contributing to it) on a regular basis. Due to the influence of evangelist Billy Graham, however, in the 1970s the belief a person could not be an “authentic” Christian until making a conscious commitment recognizing Jesus Christ as lord and savior came to prominence. In this sense, being a Christian was not something you were physically born into; rather, one was “born again,” which also meant doing “works” to regenerate one’s spirit in God’s eyes. 

“Never allow yourself to be alone with a woman who is not your wife.” 

Ron quotes this maxim from Billy Graham to demonstrate how he came to have an affair. (Vice President Mike Pence is also famously known to follow this rule.) On one hand, it can be seen as an effective code of conduct to stay out of real (or even perceived) trouble. On the other hand, it can also be problematic by implying men have no control over themselves around women, and women can’t be treated the same as men in egalitarian, non-sexual relationships.  

“We’d laugh and laugh while we was in that water, but it wadn’t no fun. We was like animals livin in the woods, just tryin to survive.” 

Here, Denver highlights the difference between appearance vs. reality. To the tourists at the Fort Worth Water Gardens, he and his friend look like they are having a good time. In reality, the two of them are little different from animals bathing in a stream. At this point in the book, Denver displays a greater awareness of the incongruity between external perceptions and interior psychologicalstates than Ron. 

“You get a spirit in you, a spirit makes you feel like nobody in the world cares nothin about you. Don’t matter if you live or die. People with that spirit get mean, dangerous. They play by the rules of the jungle.”(

Throughout the book, Denver believes in the existence of both benevolent and malevolent spirits that exist in the world and inhabit people. He attributes evil spirits to Satan, who is constantly trying to tempt people away from Jesus. At the same time, though, these spirits are not just the embodiment of anarchy and have a perverse animalistic/natural logic all their own.  

“There was found in a certain city a poor man who was wise, and by his wisdom he saved the city.” 

Much as Denver sees the presence of spirits in the material world, Deborah has her own divine visions. This quote from Ecclesiastes describes the dream she had about Denver, before she ever met him, and how he would change Fort Worth. Despite living in a materialistic society, Deborah is more devoted to the spiritual world.

“If you is fishin for a friend you just gon’ catch and release, then I ain’t got no desire to be your friend […] But if you is lookin for a real friend, then I’ll be one. Forever.” 

Denver finally tells Ron his terms for the two of them to be friends. He has seen too many people come and go in his life and has no desire for that to happen again. Instead, he’s only interested in more-permanent connections. It’s also at this point in the book that Ron begins to realize Denver likely has more to offer him than he has to offer Denver.  

“I know it ain’t none of my business, but does you own somethin that each one of them keys fits? […] Are you sure you own them, or does they own you?” 

This is another of the lessons Denver teaches Ron: we are as beholden to the things we own as those things serve us. For Ron, who has defined his life based on the trappings of material success, this is a wakeup call. In addition, while he initially was afraid Denver would feel inferior based on the number and quality of Ron’s possessions, he now realizes Denver doesn’t want to own anything more than what he already has. 

“We woke up!”

Deborah appropriates this phrase from a homeless man who comes to the shelter and, despite everything he doesn’t have, is just happy to wake up each day. For her and Ron, it comes to mean being satisfied with living in the moment, as opposed to being consumed by social pressures or material possessions. In addition, it refers to the spiritual awakening they’ve undergone, one that brings their marriage back together after Ron’s affair. 

“When you is precious to God, you become important to Satan. Watch your back, Mr. Ron. Somethin bad gettin ready to happen to Miss Debbie. The thief comes in the night.”(

Once again, Denver demonstrates how he sees this world as the battleground between God and Satan. Denver understands that based on all the good work Deborah has done, she is inevitably going to become a target of the enemy. This is also the first prophecy Denver makes that comes true. Ron realizes this after the fact.

“We serve the living God, who knows our number of days. I intend to fulfill each one of mine.” 

Deborah consistently turns to God for comfort once she has cancer. Despite the gloomy predictions from her doctors, she and Ron choose to believe in God as much or more than medicine. At the same time, Deborah realizes we are all mortal; sick or well, we only have a limited number of days, and it’s her duty, no matter what her condition is, to serve God every day. 

“You asked the man how you could bless him, and he told you he wanted two things—cigarettes and Ensure. Now you tryin to judge him instead of blessin him by blessin him with only half the things he asked for.”

This time Denver is teaching a lesson to Scott, one of Ron’s friends, who has gone to a nursing home with him to visit Ballantine, an old man there. Scott asked Ballantine what he needed but balks at buying cigarettes because he feels like they kill people. Denver has identified one of the core dilemmas facing many evangelical Christians: how to bless people without turning that into judgment of them.  

“God calls some good ones like Miss Debbie home so He can accomplish His purposes down here on the earth.”

Denver also deals with one of the primary paradoxes of Christianity: Why does a loving God allow terrible fates to befall his most worthy believers? As this common rationale explains, it’s because God needs them for purposes likely beyond our comprehension. Many people in the throes of despair, however, have a difficult time taking comfort in this idea.  

“I had trusted Him, and He had failed me. How do you forgive that?”

After Deborah’s death, Ron has lost all faith in God. Then again, in any belief system, it’s easy to be a follower when everything is going one’s way. The key thing is how this system provides comfort when tragedy inevitably arrives. 

“I know when somebody you love is gone, that’s the last time you feel like thanking God. But sometimes we has to be thankful for the things that hurt us […] ‘cause sometimes God does things that hurts us but they help someone else.” 

Denver returns to the idea that tragedy can ultimately lead to a positive benefit for others because of God’s overall plan. So, on the one hand, for someone like Ron, who has lost his faith, this provides a reason to continue to believe. On the other hand, to some people this can be a bit Pollyannaish: being determined to find something good in even the most horrible thing given that, perhaps, sometimes terrible things are just terrible with no good in them at all. 

“Nothin keeps you honest like a witness.”

Much like the Billy Graham rule about not being alone with a woman, Denver expresses the idea we all need to have someone watching what we’re doing in order to do the right thing.

“[M]ost people gon’ say that’s just superstition. They’d rather pretend things like that don’t happen.” 

After the supernatural occurrence at his sister’s abandoned house, Denver never tells the story to anyone until the book is written because he knows he and Ron won’t be believed. Due to the rise of science since the Renaissance, society has placed progressively more belief in the physical world at the expense of the spiritual. Denver believes, however, the spiritual world is equally around us; it’s just that most people don’t want to admit it. 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains by itself, alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” 

Mary Ellen calls Ron to remind him of this story about Jesus’ death from the Gospel of John, and it signifies the degree to which Deborah’s death is being interpreted by the people who knew her. From her beginnings as a bookish girl raised in Snyder, Texas, Deborah is barely one step removed from being recognized as a modern saint. Perhaps this seems extreme. Then again, it is the honest response from the people whose lives she impacted.