Small Great Things

“When I tell people this story, they assume the miracle I am referring to [...] was the birth of a baby. [...] But that day I witnessed a greater wonder. As Christina held my hand and Ms. Mina held Mama’s, there was a moment—one heartbeat, one breath—where all the differences in schooling and skin color evaporated like mirages in a desert. Where everyone was equal, and it was just one woman, helping another. That miracle, I’ve spent thirty-nine years waiting to see again.”

This final passage from the first section sets up the story that is to unfold in the following pages, mixing the focus on the act of giving birth with the differences of race and class between characters that will produce the driving tension of the novel. This idyllic moment, when these differences seem to totally fall away, and Ruth’s desire to see that type of moment again, while also articulating the incredible rarity of this in US society, all directly relate to the case of Davis Bauer and the ensuing trial to follow, as well as foreshadowing the final section of the novel, in which Turk and Ruth again come into contact with one another.

“[...] love has nothing to do with what you’re looking at, and everything to do with who’s looking. [...] It just goes to show you: every baby is born beautiful. It’s what we project on them that makes them ugly.”

This quote from Ruth, before her encounter with the Bauers, foreshadows what is to come; specifically, the ugliness that is housed in Turk, due to growing up with anger and pain, until he is full of hate. In another way, this also reflects on Ruth, who is seen as ugly in Turk’s eyes, not because of who she is, but rather because of who he is.

“There is a hierarchy to hate, and it’s different for everyone. Personally, I hate spics more than I hate Asians, I hate Jews more than that, and at the very top of the chart, I despise blacks. But even more than any of these groups, the people you always hate the most are the antiracist White folks. Because they are turncoats.”

This passage serves to establish in straightforward language the beliefs of Turk Bauer, helping to characterize him as an individual within a more general group of white supremacists. The passage moves from the particular to the general, describing the more intense hatred white supremacists have for white “turncoats.” This movement between the particular and the general serves to establish Turk as a singular character, while also allowing him to serve as a symbol for all white supremacists.

“Is stimulating the baby the same as resuscitating him? Is touching the baby technically caring for him? Could I lose my job over this? Does it matter if I’m splitting hairs? Does anything matter if this baby starts breathing again?”

This passage, falling at the moment when Ruth first notices that Davis is no longer breathing, shows the conflicted feelings Ruth is going through and that she is unable to see a clear right answer for what to do. The self-questioning is something that Ruth at first hides, but later becomes an important part of her self-expression and Kennedy’s closing arguments as the trial ends. Ruth’s saving grace is that through her testimony and Kennedy’s arguments, the jury can finally understand how conflicted and impossible this moment was for her.

“As a public defender I was never going to get rich, but I’d be able to look at myself in the mirror.”

An important aspect of Kennedy’s character is that she means well and has an idealistic streak. She is not a lawyer out to make money, which is part of the reason she and Ruth are able to connect as well as they do, despite their differences. If Kennedy had been a little less idealistic, she probably wouldn’t have fought for Ruth’s case in the first place, and would not have gotten to the point of greater understanding of racial issues she comes to by the end of the novel.

“But I knew it wasn’t sleep that was going to make me feel better. That was going to take some wilding, a moment of destruction. I needed to pound out the pain inside me, give it a home someplace else.”

In this moment, Turk is steeped in the pain of Davis’s death. The passage reveals the way he has developed of dealing with hurt, ever since his brother’s death. He converts his pain into anger and then unleashes that anger onto others, so that they also feel pain similar to what he is feeling. This passage also displays another key element of his character: that he is self-aware enough to know how he functions. It is this trait that also eventually allows him to change.

“Francis understood that if you don’t want to break, you have to bend. He was the guy who changed the structure of the White Power Movement [...] told us to grow our hair out. To go to college. To join the military. To blend in.”

One of the important aspects of this novel is exploring the ways in which the white power movement has evolved and become less visible. This passage reveals the ways in which they removed their most visible markers and instead shifted gears to infiltration of society, rather than its revolution. In many ways, as Turk later makes clear, this allows the movement to become even more frightening.

“It’s as if the little Post-it note on the patient file of Davis Bauer has nicked a vital artery, and I can’t figure out how to stop the bleeding.”

Here, Ruth is revisiting that initial moment of shock she felt as she first set eyes on the sticky note. This passage cements the sticky note’s symbolic status as the initiating factor for everything that comes after. It also remains a symbol of Ruth’s essential difference, which she is unable to escape. The analogy to a wound also serves to reflect the wound-like qualities of the extensive history of racism in the US.

“I have talked to Odette Lawton on the phone, but she didn’t sound black. This feels like a slap, like some kind of conspiracy. [...] But if the lawyer who’s on my side is black, well, then I can’t possibly be prejudiced, can I?”

Turk, at this point, is again revealing the intentionality and self-awareness that he has, and also that he and his father-in-law, Francis, have brought to the movement. There is a utilitarianism at work in his approach here. He may hate all black people, but he is more than willing to work with them when it suits his purposes and is for his own gain. He is aware of the optics of this situation, and having Odette on his side, as a black woman, helps his cause.

“‘You’re destined to do small great things,’ [Mama] told me. ‘Just like Dr. King said.’ She was referring to one of her favorite quotes: If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way. ‘But,’ she continued, ‘don’t forget where you came from.’”

This quote includes the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote that the novel takes its title from. Being one of Ruth’s mother’s favorite quotes gives it the necessary remove from Ruth herself to make it a more believable guiding sentiment of the novel. This ends up aligning well with Kennedy’s view of her public defender job, with the difference she makes being a more individual one, since the system is impossible to change on one’s own.

“As a nurse you learn how to make a patient comfortable during moments that would otherwise be humiliating […] As I stand shivering, naked, I wonder if this guard’s job is the absolute opposite of mine. If she wants nothing more than to make me feel shame.”

This is an interesting moment for Ruth’s character, in which she sees her job as a nurse in a new light, viewing it more clearly through its inverse. Picoult has already established through the first couple of Ruth sections that she is very good at her job and puts the patient’s feelings ahead of her own. Now, she’s seeing the guard do the opposite, which helps her understand the positive impact she has on people more acutely.

“There are two types of people who become public defenders: those who believe they can save the world, and those who know damned well they can’t. [...] Once a bleeding heart calluses into realism, victories become individual ones [...]”

This moment for Kennedy closely mirrors the quote from Dr. King, which helps ground the novel. This focus on individual cases and making a difference where one can gives the novel’s message more of an impact. Trying to alter an entire system is an overwhelming prospect, and those that take it on can often wind up burnt out. Here, Kennedy espouses the spirit of Dr. King’s words and tries to do “small things in a great way.”

“I had assumed that justice was truly just, that jurors would assume I was innocent until proven guilty. But prejudice is exactly the opposite: judging before the evidence exists. I don’t stand a chance.”

This is one of Ruth’s lowest moments in the novel, falling as it does near the halfway mark. In keeping with the theme of doing what one can when one can, Ruth is seeing herself caught up in an unchangeably vast and immovable system of oppression that goes against the very ideals that it claims to espouse. Justice, or judging correctly, can only come after one sees the evidence and the full scope and truth of a situation. Prejudice, on the other hand, is pre-judging, making truth an insignificant factor.

“The reason we don’t talk about race is because we do not speak a common language.”

One of the questions at the novel’s core is whether one can have productive conversations around race with people who are different from one another, and if so, how this can be accomplished. In this moment, coming right after the shopping trip in which Kennedy gets a small taste of Ruth’s day-to-day experience with implicit racism, the two of them are both engaged in trying to understand one another. Even admitting that it’s impossible to truly empathize completely is a step in the right direction, they seem to be saying.

“You’re my only sister.” 

This quote from Ruth’s sister comes from Ruth’s memory, in which Rachel sticks up for Ruth at her friends’ expense. It is then repeated a couple of pages later in the narrative present, with Adisa again acknowledging that familial bonds are important and run deeper than other relationships can. This acknowledgment allows them to begin to heal the rift caused by their differing outlooks and philosophies.

“Because Ruth is black. Light-skinned, but still black. And you can’t necessarily trust the white people in that jury pool if they tell you that they aren’t prejudiced. They may be a lot more implicitly racist than they show on the outside, and that makes them wild cards for the jury.” 

One of the themes the novel plays with throughout is the degree to which things are invisible and the degree to which things are seen. Turk is representative of a relatively small percentage of the population who are overtly and unabashedly prejudiced. Here, Howard is alluding to the much larger and possibly more dangerous segment of the population who do not wear their prejudices on their sleeves and thus are easier to overlook or actively ignore. Howard, a black attorney in Kennedy’s office, is reminding Kennedy of this less visible prejudice that perhaps has even more sway than the overt variety.

“And just one word under that: LOVE. Brit had wanted it to say LOVED. [...] But at the last minute I changed it. I was never going to stop, so why make it past tense?”

This moment serves to foreshadow Turk’s dramatic shift by the end of the novel. Earlier, we see the moment in Turk’s memory in which he gets his knuckle tattoos that make visible his divided priorities: love for his family, hate for those different from him. But here, in the wake of his grief, when he is trying to give that grief a lasting symbol through the headstone, he focuses solely on the love he feels (and will never stop feeling) for his dead son. The hate has fallen to the wayside, though he doesn’t acknowledge it yet here. By the end, when his only remaining tattoo is of the word “LOVE,” the text echoes this first iteration of that sentiment.

“I guess I didn’t realize that a trial is not just a sanctioned character assassination. It is a mind game, so that the defendant’s armor is chipped away one scale at a time, until you can’t help but wonder if maybe what the prosecution is saying is true.”

This is an interesting moment that is mirrored in the next section, which is narrated by Turk, in which he also expresses doubts about his own righteousness. The novel here is putting its protagonists through a test of their steadfastness. One aspect of both Ruth’s and Turk’s characters is this ability to hold their own beliefs under a critical gaze. In this case, Ruth is reflecting seriously on that moment of hesitation when Davis first stopped breathing, unable to know for sure what could have been different if she had chosen other actions.

“You have to blame Ruth Jefferson, because if you don’t, then you’re the one to blame, because you and your wife somehow created an Aryan child with a flaw in his DNA.”

This moment, directly preceding Turk’s final outburst in court that Odette fears will lose this case for them, reveals the way in which Kennedy is able to get under Turk’s skin and worm her way into his thoughts. Before this line of questioning, we had already seen Turk express his doubts about this very thing, wondering if he and Brittany had brought this on themselves, albeit in the more concrete way of removing a competent nurse from their baby’s care. Here, however, Kennedy is taking this to the more abstract or religious level, in which Turk on some level believes that people get what is coming to them. This idea is incompatible with his understanding of his own righteousness, which means he must have Ruth as a scapegoat in order to remain righteous in his own eyes. This is one of the first cracks in his hatred.

“Yet danger, it’s relative. [...] I don’t have to worry that something I say or do is going to threaten my ability to put food on the table or pay my bills. For me, danger looks different: it’s whatever can separate me from Violet, from Micah. But no matter what face you put on your own personal bogeyman [...] It has the power to terrify, and to make you do things you wouldn’t normally think you’d do, all in an effort to stay safe.”

After Ruth has fired Kennedy, Kennedy goes on a sort of spiritual walkabout, attempting to get herself out of her own safe space to try to see things from a new perspective. Here, we see the beginning of Kennedy’s main shift as a character, in which she is beginning to see the extent to which her whiteness alters the level of her main concerns and preoccupations in life. While people in this less affluent neighborhood may have more life-and-death concerns coming at them day to day, her own concerns are more emotionally fraught in her life. One thing that remains the same, however, is the effect these concerns can have on a person, which can often be equally strong, despite the disparity in the consequences.

“That’s because racism isn’t just about hate. [...] It’s because racism is also about power […] and who has access to it. When I started working on this case, ladies and gentlemen, I didn’t see myself as a racist. Now I realize I am. Not because I hate people of different races but because—intentionally or unintentionally—I’ve gotten a boost from the color of my skin, just like Ruth Jefferson suffered a setback because of hers.”

As part of Kennedy’s closing argument, this represents her abandonment of her previous assertion that race cannot be productively addressed in the courtroom. After her night spent attempting to get a better perspective of what Ruth goes through, she has come to this moment of admitting publicly that she has implicit biases and holds privileges based on her skin tone that others lack. By admitting her own biases, this invites the jury to examine their own potential biases in a less risky manner. This may be the aspect of her closing argument that has the most impact on Ruth’s case.

“Maybe how much you’ve loved someone, that’s how much you can hate. It’s like a pocket turned inside out. It stands to reason that the opposite should be true, too.” 

Turk, having just found out that his wife, whom he loves, is half-black, is going through emotional turmoil. The work that began with his own self-doubts is now gaining even more ground in him, so that he has this revelation about the similar impulses of love and hate, and that one can be converted into the other. This is the first main step toward the Turk we see in the Epilogue.

“[S]omething shifts between us. It’s power, I realize, and we are dead even.”

By the end of the trial, now that Kennedy is no longer in a position of power over Ruth or helping to determine her fate, Ruth realizes that they have ended up, despite their differences, in remarkably similar positions. They have both learned more about each other, but more importantly, Kennedy has ceded some of her privilege by admitting to it. At this moment, the two character arcs have brought them to the same place, and they can now move forward as friends, without the same amount of baggage hanging over them.