The Nickel Boys Lesson Plan

Discuss the novel's twist and its implications about Elwood and Turner's identities.

The novel’s ending reveals that the man that the reader has gotten to know as Elwood is actually Turner. Elwood is dead—as they attempted to escape Nickel Academy, he was shot, and Turner adopted Elwood’s identity and lived under Elwood’s name.

Over the course of the novel, Elwood and Turner are presented as character foils for each other: characters that contrast each other, revealing qualities that may not be explicitly obvious to the reader unless they are able to compare the character to someone else. However, the ending of the novel subverts the literary technique of character...