Kaitlin Loughran

10/4/20

Mr. Adam, Humanities, 4

The book "The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas has many themes, including racism,

persona, justice, and corruption. Arguably, this book is all of these themes at once, as any good

book should be. The Hate U Give transitions through many themes and plot points throughout

the book, such as Starr's relationships with Maya and Hailey compared to her coping and

testifying as a witness about Khalil’s death. The themes are all intertwined with one another, like

how Starr started questioning her and Hailey’s friendship after realizing the blatant racism she

had after, during, and before Khalil's death. The themes of this book can be hard to find if you

only focus on one section to see the whole picture you have to look at the entire book.

The Hate U Give starts when Starr is at a party with her friend Kenya who shares a

brother, Seven, with her. At the party, Starr talks to Khalil right before someone at the party gets

shot. When the two of them are leaving in Khalil's car, they get pulled over by Officer 115.

Officer 115 questions Khalil, to which Khalil answers begrudgingly, and pats him down. When

Khalil goes to check on Starr, he pulls out a hairbrush. Officer 115 responds to the hairbrush by

shooting Khalil in the back three times. Afterward, Kahlil's death quickly became a story on the

news of Khalil being a hoodlum who deals drugs. In the book, Starr was offered to speak about

Khalil's death but didn't take the chance at first because of her fear of King, the gang leader of

the King Lords. This specific part of the book deals with racism, especially when the people on

the news are pinning Starr and Khalil as thugs who refused to cooperate. She later does speak out

about what happened at the shooting because she realized that being quiet wasn't going to help

Khalil.
 Star has a lot of relationships in the book, her brothers Sekani and Seven, her friends

Hailey and Maya, her parents, and her boyfriend, Chris. Across the timeline of the book, Starr

slowly realizes that Hailey is racist. After Starr realizes that Hailey is racist, Hailey and Starr

drift apart and eventually argue to the point where they cannot be friends. This part of the book is

both about racism and identity when Starr figured out that she had known all along that Hailey

was racist but had let it happen, she got angry with herself for letting that happen. Starr

throughout the book becomes more confident about talking about Khalil and generally about

racism.

Starr's relationship with her father, Maverick, the ex-felon who used to be King's right-

hand man, was generally consistent in the book. They had a very abnormally normal relationship

with a protective father and a naive daughter. Maverick warned Starr about prejudice, especially

in cops from a very young age. Maverick had told her not to snitch, which is tying into the

themes of corruption, racism, and justice. Corruption in the police force is a well-known topic,

especially now about discrimination in cops. Not of cops, in cops. Racism is basically in every

part of this book so her father had to warn her about the police, especially the precinct in Garden

Heights, being racist is obvious. Justice is a lesser topic right here, but justice is also involved in

this book, like when she testifies for the grand jury ultimately to have Officer 115 get acquitted.

Starr's relationship with the boy DeVante in this book is also vital to the themes. DeVante

lived with Starr's uncle Carlos through approximately half of the book after he stole money from

King for his brother and grandmother. Later in the book, DeVante gets beaten up by King, he is

rescued by Seven, Starr, and Kenya, along with Lyric and Chris when Iesha tells them to leave.

On their way back, their car breaks down and they have to go on foot. When they do, they run
into a protest where they are protesting Officer 115 getting acquitted instead of indicted. Starr

joins them and speaks out using the words "Khalil lived!" to say that his life matters.

During the entirety of the book, Starr says she lives in two different worlds. This theme is

her persona, how others view her. She doesn't want to be feared or pitied at Williamson, the

school for rich white people, and she doesn't want to be weak in Garden Heights. Her persona is

a big part of her personality because it determined how she acted in the first half of the book.

Towards the second half of the book, Starr's two different worlds crumbled into one world, like

when she and Hailey got into a fistfight in the hall of Williamson.

The phrase "The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody" which Tupac says, and

Khalil repeated is used throughout the book. The acronym "T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E." is referring to the

biggest, recurring theme of the book, racism. It's obvious that racism plays a major role in The

Hate U Give, Khalil's death, the protests, the Grand Jury, even the police's behavior in general.

When Starr was asked why she threw the gas at the cops at the protest that quickly turned into a

riot, she replied that she was “throwing it back at them”. She was returning the favor, the hate

you give fucks everybody.

The Hate U Give is a book full of themes. The themes connect, and all relate to each

other, Starr's personas stem from racism, and the corruption can come back to racism (and

prejudice in general) it's all correlated. The fact is that this world is all a little corrupted, and the

themes of this book show that very well. The book's themes are corruption, racism, justice, and

persona/identity. The Hate U Give's themes are clear but not obvious (most of them anyway).

They make the book a good learning experience for anyone who would read it.