54 pages • 1 hour read
Lawrence HillThe Illegal
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Race, Privilege, and Power
Race is central to this novel. Defining Blackness is the critical tenet of Freedom State’s history. Whiteness comes with automatic citizenship and power in this country. Blackness grants second-class citizenship at best and deportation and death at worst. The stark power differential informs even the most banal aspects of existence, such as the characters’ running habits. Keita must win races not because it is fun but because it could save his life. Calder wants to run well because “he had bet five friends that in this, his first marathon, he could beat 3:15. Riding on the bet: a 750-millilitre bottle of eighteen-year-old, single-malt Macallan scotch worth two hundred and fifty dollars” (128). The contrast between what is at stake for Keita and Calder drips with satire, and this hyperbolic example demonstrates the difference between Black and white identity in Freedom State.
The irony is that while race’s consequences are undoubtedly real, race itself is revealed to be a social construct, as evidenced by the fact that characters like John and Prime Minister Wellington spend so much time trying to define and prove their racial identity. Wellington “passes” for white and therefore rises to power, yet the very fact that he is able to do so reveals how malleable ideas of race are. Moreover, the virulently anti-Black tone he assumes while in office raises the question of in what sense he is “Black” at all, given that he neither strikes others as such nor acts based on any sense of kinship with other Black people. Meanwhile, John is ashamed of his whiteness, choosing instead to make a documentary that will help secure him a spot in the Black community.
Nevertheless, the fact that the idea of race has material consequences means that even characters whose race is well-defined in both their eyes and others’ must make choices about how to engage with it. Candace and Viola, for instance, strongly identify with their Black heritage and wish to change the sociopolitical culture in Freedom State so that Black citizens are treated with equal protection and humanity. Ivernia Beech is white but becomes an ally to those less privileged than herself: “Ain’t easy for a white person to be saintly, but she closing in. That there woman is your camel, passing through the eye of the needle. Yes, sir. She a friend of the people, brother, so make her your friend too” (228). Ivernia’s wish to share her privilege stands in contrast to someone like Rocco Calder, who is initially painfully oblivious to the privilege his skin color grants him.
Legality Versus Justice
The Illegal takes place primarily in a country where inequality is enshrined in law: Black residents of Freedom State are second-class citizens, and Ivernia’s travails with her son imply that the legal system can be weaponized to oppress other marginalized groups as well. The novel thus explores the tension between legality, which often serves the interests of those in power, and real justice.
This tension especially informs the novel’s exploration of citizenship. Hill presents a polarity in perspectives, from the official government stance to Viola’s proclamation that it is impossible for a human to be illegal: “Everybody knew that the prime minister and his advisers ran and controlled immigration policies and practices. The government called undocumented people ‘Illegals,’ but Viola refused to use the term. As far as she was concerned, it was fair to accuse somebody of doing something illegal but not to say that they were illegal” (71). Viola’s stance and rhetoric mirror those of real-world immigration rights activists, drawing attention to the way an apparently objective descriptor of behavior can become a stigmatized identity. In this case, the government wields the law cynically to criminalize the very existence of people it deems inferior. This emphasis on illegality as an identity has the added “benefit” of drawing attention away from the government’s actions, which are frequently not only corrupt but illegal themselves.
In this context, characters seeking justice must largely operate outside the law. Lula is an extreme case, framing Wellington for an act of human trafficking that she herself committed on the grounds that doing so will serve the greater good. Ivernia, by contrast, breaks the law without straying into moral ambiguity herself when she harbors Keita, a refugee. As a police officer, Candace offers the most complex view of legality. She is a representative of the government and an officer of the law, so she must constantly navigate the line between upholding her position and serving the people. Through her actions, the novel underscores that doing good sometimes means flouting the law (i.e., helping Keita rather than turning him in) and that what is legal is not always the same as what is right.
The Power of Marginalized Voices
Words are a force for both good and ill in The Illegal, which begins with Keita’s fellow runners hurling racist slurs at him. Keita, however, responds by singing, which allows him to overcome both the sting of the insults as well as the physical pain he is in. The scene encapsulates the novel’s larger stance on the power of speech; while language can be a tool of oppression, it is also key to the struggle for liberation, as those who are marginalized are also frequently voiceless and must find a way to make their speech heard.
Viola’s journalism is a straightforward example of this dynamic. Due to her race, orientation, and disability, Viola has had to work particularly hard to prove herself in her field, and yet her employer insists she confine herself to covering sports stories when she expresses interest in covering the refugee crisis. This is not merely an effort to keep Viola “in her place” by hampering her career prospects; rather, it signals her employer’s awareness of what sympathetic coverage of the crisis could do. Nevertheless, Viola continues to investigate the Yvette Peters story, even after the case appears to be closed and she herself has been awarded a prize in journalism—a sign of her prioritization of justice above personal ambition.
John’s documentary serves a similar function in that it brings corruption to light. The project begins as an effort to expose the deplorable conditions of AfricTown—itself an exercise in speaking truth to power. However, once John records footage of the prime minister visiting a brothel and (apparently) conspiring to sell refugees, the documentary takes on new significance as a way of indicting the powerful simply by publicizing their own words. Though the intricacies of this situation turn out to be more complicated than they appeared—it was Lula, not Wellington, who arranged for Yvette’s deportation—the novel suggests that John’s documentary speaks truth in the broader sense, as there is little doubt that Wellington is both racist and corrupt.
Song, including Keita’s lyrics during the race, provides a more figurative evocation of the theme. When Charity sings with her choir in Zantoroland, Hill uses the Baptist church and its hymns to allude to song’s importance for enslaved Black Americans: Historians have shown that singing was one way enslaved individuals created community, communicated in secret, and survived in the face of cruel, inhumane conditions. Keita’s phrase, “Want to shatter your opponent’s confidence? Just when he starts to hurt, you sing” (4), reflects that tradition. Singing’s role as resistance also surfaces in the hymn that foreshadows Keita crossing into Freedom State to save his sister:
So high, you can’t get over it
So low, you can’t get under it
So wide, you can’t get around it
You gotta go through the door (12).
Even the novel’s structure is a testament to the power of individual voices to create change, as its use of rotating points of view ensures a multiplicity of perspectives come to light.
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