Racism
Race runs throughout every space and scene depicted in "The Nickel Boys," especially since a majority of it is set in the southern United States during the Jim Crow era. Elwood is targeted for his skin color when he is arrested and accused of stealing the car that he had hitched a ride in to try and get to the local community college. In his hometown of Tallahassee, Elwood witnesses racial segregation at school, on the streets, and at his workplace. Later on, at Nickel Academy, race divides the boys into distinct groups with different privileges. The black boys are subject to significantly more cruel treatment at the hands of the administration. Over and over, the novel shows the horrific extent to which black people's rights were violated by white-dominated institutions. Importantly, the novel does not offer the reader any method of ignoring the racial violence and inequality it displays. It is graphic, both in its language and imagery, forcing the reader to confront the horrific realities of segregated America. Instead, the reader must fully experience the boys' narrative and witness violence that appears, as Elwood and Turner come to realize, utterly senseless.
The Civil Rights Movement
While the civil rights movement does not occupy a central role in the plot, it is an important influence on Elwood's life and his understanding of justice. He returns to Martin Luther King Jr.'s recording At Zion Hill often, re-listening to the speeches and repeating them to himself during his time at Nickel, where they become mantras that guide him towards believing in a fight for justice against the corrupt school administration. Mr. Hill, Elwood's teacher, is also a part of a civil rights demonstration, which Elwood sees as a young boy—a formative experience, as it allowed him to see one of his mentors taking an active stance against racial injustice.
Trauma and Post-Trauma
The novel depicts many scenes that could be classified as traumatic: sexual and physical abuse, racism, bribery, physical violence, and even murder. The boys undergo extreme experiences that leave them traumatized. These experiences leave behind mental scars that the boys must learn to live with—a process that the novel explores through the flash-forward sections and in the prologue, where it mentions an online forum that the boys used to connect and share their stories. Some of the boys find solace and cope with their trauma by coming together and reliving these memories by sharing them. Others turn to repression, as Turner does after escaping Nickel Academy. He is so insistent on forgetting his time at Nickel that he erases his own identity—the one that he had at Nickel as Turner—and takes on Elwood's name. Only after sharing this truth does he feel compelled to finally revisit his memories of the past and return to Tallahassee.
Having Your Voice Heard
The prologue's explanation of how the story of Nickel Academy comes to the attention of the greater population highlights how little attention is paid by the media to issues affecting poor and black people. Only certain types of people are commonly given a hearing. The complaints of the students at Nickel Academy were ignored for decades, until a young student (who is presumably white) discovered the bodies buried beneath the school. By the end of the narrative, Turner decides to take an active stance against the silencing of the Nickel Boys, and he vows to speak for them, which means metaphorically speaking for both the boys who are still alive and the boys who died at the Academy, like Elwood.
Corruption
"The Nickel Boys" explores how corruption can come to permeate an institution like Nickel Academy. The school was founded and built upon corrupt principles: its first director was a Klu Klux Klan member with no educational background, as he was in agriculture. His only qualification was that he was able to extract profit and run Nickel in a way that would generate money—a process that totally contradicted Nickel's supposed mission as a reform school that was meant to rehabilitate young boys with criminal backgrounds. From then on, Nickel shaped itself as an institution that exploited its students and used them for free labor. It had no actual educational resources, as Elwood discovers when he tries to ask for additional math work. The school fails even to teach the boys to read. Instead, it sells its extra resources to local businesses and forces the boys to work, producing bricks that the school can also sell. Corruption also cloaks the school in silence; no one wants to shatter the illusion of normalcy that prevails. Everyone turns a blind eye towards the violence, murder, and horror that occur within its walls.
Violence
Brutal violence is frequently depicted during the novel's chapters on Nickel Academy. The boys are beaten in a shed that they dub "The Ice Cream Factory." Some are even killed, like Griff is when he fails to follow Superintendent's orders to intentionally lose a boxing match. Elwood is beaten so badly that his jeans become embedded in the skin of his legs, leaving him bed-bound in the hospital for several weeks. The level of violence that occurs emphasizes the cruel, paradoxical absurdity of its origin: there is no real motive for violence that is so extreme, and yet, it happens over and over again. Turner voices the belief that the violence comes from the true, evil nature of men, and Elwood eventually comes to agree in some capacity, since he comes to understand the violence as senseless and without real reason. This form of violence is in some ways more terrifying, since it has no limits or laws governing its execution.
Hope and Survival
As the boys try to survive the horrific conditions of Nickel Academy, they each find ways of clinging to shreds of hope. For Elwood, this means repeating the words of Martin Luther King Jr. and trying to fight back against Nickel Academy. He wants to break the norm by breaking out of the school. Other boys approach their survival differently; Turner, for example, adopts a more passive stance at first. He eats soap powder and makes himself sick to get out of work. His survival requires him to harm himself. When Jaimie and Desmond find the green bottle of what they believe to be "horse medicine," it becomes another emblem of hope, since it gives the boys a way of enacting revenge upon the men who harm them.
