40 pages • 1 hour read
Victor LavalleThe Ballad of Black Tom
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 16-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2
Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary
As the story’s climax begins, 75 officers with heavy artillery block off access Red Hook’s main street. Just like in Harlem and Queens, Red Hooks’ residents crowd around to witness the events. The police are armed with rifles, pistols, and anti-aircraft machine guns. Officers storm Suydam’s tenement buildings, kicking open doors and arresting people at random. Chaos ensues, and though most of the onlookers are concerned, the young men seem thrilled by the weaponry and violence.
Night has fallen, and the police still have not located the alleged kidnapping victims, who they presume are Norwegian children. Malone is the only one who knows the true purpose of the raid. When he enters the last tenement building, he sees a strange door marked with an “O,” the fifteenth letter of the Supreme Alphabet. When Malone opens the door, he sees Black Tom and Suydam but realizes they are not in the apartment building. He notices that Black Tom seems younger and more innocent. Confused, Malone pulls out his revolver, but Suydam slams the door before he can shoot. When Malone opens the door again, it leads into the building’s basement.
The smell of dank river water wafts up the stairs, and Malone hears Suydam call him. When Malone reaches the basement, he realizes the basements of all three buildings have been combined into one space. In the dim light, he recognizes the throne-like chair from Suydam’s library. Strange words are written on the walls, and Black Tom appears with what looks like a paint brush covered in dark paint. Suydam begins to chant, and a great black hole opens up. Malone is too curious to pull his gun or escape, even as he glimpses Mr. Howard’s corpse slumped in Suydam’s chair and the hideous dark figure at the bottom of the sea.
The building is crumbling from the heavy artillery fire, but Malone will not leave. Just as Suydam shouts in triumph, Black Tom slits his throat, and the old man falls to the ground. He says that Suydam “‘wanted power, but the Sleeping King doesn’t honor small requests’” (129). Black Tom shoves Malone closer to the abyss, and Malone sees the underwater city and the terrifying form of the Sleeping King. He tries to pull away, but Black Tom chokes him and cuts his eyelids off, singing the conjure song while he does so. Unable to look away, Malone sees the Sleeping King open his eyes before blood clouds his vision.
Six officers storm the basement and open fire on Black Tom.
Part 2, Chapter 17 Summary
After the raid, Malone receives the police department’s highest honor and spends weeks recovering from his injuries in the hospital. The police keep the press away because they are afraid of the strange stories Malone might tell reporters. They also want to keep the public from seeing Malone’s gruesome, lidless eyes. They eventually give Malone dark goggles to hide his deformity.
The press reports favorably on the raid. Though the police found no kidnapped children, they arrested nearly 50 criminals and illegal immigrants. Reports state that the buildings collapsed because criminals had stockpiled explosives in the tenements’ basements, and that Robert Suydam, whom Red Hook’s underworld corrupted, was killed along with six police officers and one private detective. Trapped in the rubble for 29 hours, Malone was the only survivor. None of the reports mention Black Tom.
Suffering from post-traumatic stress, Malone agrees to retire to the small town of Chepachet, Rhode Island, where the City of New York will pay for his living expenses and psychiatric treatment. The specialist he sees is incredulous about Malone’s claims that a Negro named Black Tom had orchestrated the bloody events. The specialist convinces Malone that “Negroes simply weren’t that devious" (138) and cannot understand why Malone is afraid that Black Tom might return. Over time, Malone’s memory of the events at Red Hook change to match the accepted narrative.
While looking through his old notebook one day, Malone has a vision of the last moments of the raid. He sees Black Tom appear behind the six police officers and slit each of their throats. Then, he walks through a portal as he makes a low, droning sound. Malone runs into town to escape these visions but is terrified when he sees the tall buildings, which remind him of the tenements at Red Hook. He falls to the ground screaming as onlookers gather, and in his head, he hears the last words Black Tom’s spoke to him: “I’ll take Cthulhu over you devils any day” (144).
Part 2, Chapter 18 Summary
Black Tom tells the final chapter from his perspective. Black Tom visits the Victoria Society. He watches the sunset. This is the day of the raid, but he has somehow jumped backward in time, since the final showdown with Malone and Suydam took place at night. Buckeye arrives and his friend’s strange manner disturbs him. Buckeye says he heard about Tommy’s father’s death, but Black Tom seems confused, “as if he’d forgotten he ever had a father” (145-46). This line is significant because it shows that Black Tom has left his old life as Charles Thomas “Tommy” Tester completely behind. Black Tom responds cryptically to Buckeye’s questions about what happened to him. Black Tom tells Buckeye that white people always treated him like a monster, so he decided to become one. He admits that in his anger, he forgot about Harlem and the people who cared about him: “Nobody here ever called me a monster” (146). He tells Buckeye about the coming apocalypse, and while Buckeye is trying to decide how to dispose of the razor, Black Tom jumps out the window and disappears.
Part 2, Chapters 16-18 Analysis
Chapter 16 is the novella’s climax. All of the foreshadowing and symbolism we have seen throughout the plot have led up to this point. When Malone opens the marked door and sees Tommy in Suydam’s library on the other side, we realize it is the moment from Chapter 5, seen from the opposite perspective. Back then, only Suydam had the power of interdimensional travel and needed his library as the vessel. Later, when Malone thinks of the raid, he recalls that after Black Tom killed the police officers, he opened a portal and stepped through without the aid of Suydam’s library. Black Tom has surpassed Suydam in his supernatural abilities.
The heavy artillery, especially the anti-aircraft Browning machine gun, symbolizes the full destructive power of the police motivated by racism. The use of weapons from World War I implies that the police are not entering Red Hook for an ordinary raid, but a war. The rumor about the kidnapped white woman morphs into three “blue-eyed Norwegian” children (115), which prompts a mob to form among the Norwegian immigrant population. This phrase is a direct quotation from “The Horror at Red Hook.” In the original story, the children have indeed been kidnapped, and Malone convinces the police force to raid the area. In Lovecraft’s story, there is no questioning as to whether this is the right course of action.
Because the novella splits between Tommy’s perspective and Malone’s, each story requires its own denouement. Chapter 17 is the denouement for Part 2, in which Malone reflects on the events of the raid. Articles about the raid feature the police in a positive light. LaValle portrays Red Hook as a haven for criminals, especially those engaged in the illegal immigrant trade, but he also notes that Americans rarely welcomed non-Europeans at Ellis Island. In Lovecraft’s story, the Red Hook immigrants are deviant by nature, and crime is the only lifestyle they understand. In Lovecraft’s story as in LaValle’s, the African, Asian, and Middle Eastern population is the source of the occult magic that fascinates both Suydam and Malone, but in the end, it is Lovecraft’s creation, Cthulhu, which represents the greatest evil in LaValle’s retelling. LaValle employs dramatic irony when the magic that wakes Cthulhu comes from modern African Americans, not some ancient lore. Malone is forever scarred by the events at Red Hook and is the only person alive who knows the full story of the raid and the danger of Black Tom.
Chapter 18 is the denouement for Part 1, which returns to Tommy’s perspective after he has transformed into Black Tom. When Black Tom talks to Buckeye, he has a moment of regret, wondering why he couldn’t be like his father who was content with leading a normal life, even if it meant enduring society’s racism. Otis Tester’s disability confines him to his bedroom, but his murder proves that in a racist society, he is not even safe in his home. Black Tom has one moment of innocent joy when he laughs at Buckeye’s joke, but he acknowledges that it is too late for him to return to his former self. The ending of the novella is bittersweet. On one hand, the reader is glad that Black Tom has triumphed over Suydam and the police, who seemed to represent a greater evil than Cthulhu. On the other hand, we know that Black Tom has destroyed the last vestiges of goodness in himself and has unleashed forces that will in time destroy everyone, even those who have suffered injustice, even the people he once wanted to protect.
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By Victor Lavalle
