Content warning: The guide contains discussions of rape, sexual assault, and racism that appear in the source text.

Given the themes of racism and of a Black man who is wronged by both the Southern justice system and a white person’s accusation, the word “cotton” has connotations of slavery. Enslaved Black people were used, abused, and robbed of their freedom by white enslavers, often forced to pick cotton, a mainstay of Southern industry in the Antebellum era. When Jennifer picks Ronald Cotton out of the lineup, she also takes away his freedom and places him in horrible circumstances that he cannot change, reflecting Racism and Unjust Incarceration. At the end of the book, when she says “Thank God I picked you” (281) and he agrees, it is an inversion of this symbol, framing her choosing of him as the act that brought them into each other’s lives.

While Ronald is incarcerated, he is committed to remaining peaceful and free most of the time. This is often framed as his reluctance to become another animal. The inmates are kept in cages like animals, and he believes this is one of the things that leads them to begin behaving like beasts.