Bullying and Injustice vs. Kindness and Compassion Theme Analysis

Kenny experiences a fair amount of unkindness in The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963. At home, Byron constantly pulls pranks on him and insults him by calling him “square.” And unfortunately for Kenny, the teasing doesn’t stop there, since he also faces bullies like Larry Dunn at school, where he’s often made fun of for having a lazy eye. Even LJ Jones, who is supposedly Kenny’s friend, steals his toys whenever they play together. In seemingly every area of his life, then, Kenny faces mistreatment and unkindness, but he himself still practices kindness. For example, when Byron gets his lips stuck to the car’s mirror while trying to kiss his own reflection in the freezing cold, Kenny tries to help him. He knows, however, that Byron would “do some real cruel stuff” to him if their positions were reversed—“but not me,” Kenny says, suggesting that he sees the value of kindness and compassion. The novel presents this compassion as an admirable quality, but it also doesn’t shy away from depicting the world as a place that can be full of cruelty. When Kenny witnesses the immediate aftermath of a gruesome bombing at a Black church in Birmingham, Alabama, he comes face to face with racist violence and finds it difficult to move on from such staggering injustice. But Byron eventually reaffirms Kenny’s tendency to respond to injustice by practicing kindness in everyday life. The novel thus celebrates people who choose to spread love and compassion instead of letting cruelty prevail in their lives.

On the whole, kindness comes naturally to Kenny. He’s not the sort of person who takes advantage of other people or kicks them when they’re down. In fact, it’s almost as if he literally can’t adopt a cruel mindset. For instance, he ends up becoming close friends with Rufus even though he initially hoped the school bullies would pick on Rufus, thinking this would take negative attention away from Kenny himself. Before long, though, Kenny not only becomes Rufus’s best friend, but even starts sharing his lunch with him every day so Rufus won’t go hungry. It’s clear, then, that Kenny has a natural impulse toward kindness, perhaps because he finds it easy to put himself in other people’s shoes. He also demonstrates his empathy and compassion when Byron gets his lips stuck to the car mirror while kissing his own reflection on a blisteringly cold evening. Of course, he playfully makes fun of Byron for acting so foolishly, but he doesn’t take the rare opportunity to mess with his brother. Since Byron is stuck, Kenny could really do anything and wouldn’t have to fear immediate payback. But he doesn’t do anything mean to his brother because that’s not the kind of person he is. He knows that Byron would mess with him if they were in opposite positions, but even this knowledge doesn’t drive him to cruelty, thus demonstrating his unfailing habit of practicing kindness.

In fact, Kenny is such a compassionate person that he’s able to respond with kindness even when other people mistreat him. Even though Larry Dunn steals his nice leather gloves and beats him up, Kenny feels bad when Byron takes revenge by bullying Larry in front of a large crowd. Kenny watches in horror as his older brother pulverizes Larry, pushing him around on one of the coldest days of the year. As Larry scrambles, everyone sees that his jacket is only a thin, torn windbreaker and that the bottoms of his shoes have holes in them. And though everyone laughs at him for having such worn-out clothing, Kenny feels bad—so bad, in fact, that he can’t bring himself to watch the scene anymore. Even though Larry frequently beats him up and humiliates him, Kenny still feels empathy toward him, recognizing that Larry is a human being with his own challenges. Instead of simply resenting him and hoping that he suffers, Kenny would rather see Byron leave Larry alone, making it quite clear that his own compassion isn’t limited to a select few people in his life; rather, Kenny feels compassion for seemingly everyone and always tries to respond to adversity with kindness.

It is perhaps because Kenny always tries to respond to cruelty with kindness that he has trouble moving on in the aftermath of the Birmingham church bombing. When he finally breaks down and cries, he asks his brother why anyone would purposefully hurt children by bombing a Sunday School meeting. This unjust and hateful act of racism is so severe that it defies all understanding, which is why Byron says the men who bombed the church must have “let hate eat them up and turn them into monsters.” In the past, Kenny has been able to understand why his aggressors act the way they do—for example, he empathized with Larry Dunn when he saw that Larry’s family didn’t have enough money to give him warm winter clothing, ultimately making it easier for Kenny to forgive him for stealing the leather gloves. But it’s not really possible to empathize with the reasons that drove racists to bomb the church in Birmingham, since it’s such a sickening and unforgivable act. However, that doesn’t mean that kindness isn’t still important in everyday life—after all, practicing kindness is a sure-fire way for people to protect themselves from letting hatred “eat” away at them and turn them into “monsters.” What’s more, the compassion that Byron shows Kenny is the only thing that helps him move on from the traumatizing experience of the church bombing. In this way, then, Byron shows his little brother that kindness is still worthwhile and enriching—even in moments of hardship.