Miles Morales: Spider-Man

Fiction | Graphic Novel/Book | YA | Published in 2017

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-14

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Spider-Man

Despite the novel being called Miles Morales: Spider Man, the titular character hardly spends time fighting crime as Spider-Man (thus, the prioritization of Miles’s name). Instead, Spider-Man functions as a symbol representing the side of Miles that he views as heroic. Spider-Man is strength, a hero, while Miles is just an average teenager. Miles separates his identity as Spider-Man from his identity as Miles Morales, viewing them as two entirely different entities. In doing so, he constantly compares one part of himself to the other, growing frustrated with his other half when something doesn’t go correctly.

In an effort to meet the expectations of his family and community, Miles decides to shed his identity as Spider-Man so he can focus on school. When Miles does put on the mask—a metaphor for him putting on his Spider-Man persona—he only recognizes Spider-Man in the mirror, and is unable to see Miles Morales beyond the lenses of his mask. Throughout the story, Miles places himself and Spider-Man at odds, stating that only one can exist at a time. For example, in Chapter 4, Miles remarks that “all the cool he thought he had was currently balled up into a spandex mess in his closet,” believing that Spider-Man’s traits can’t simultaneously exist when he is Miles Morales (54).

The Spider-Man persona also serves as a form of escapism for Miles when he becomes overwhelmed by the weight of others’ expectations. After nearly being expelled for leaving the Campus Convenience store unattended, resulting in a robbery, Miles pulls on his suit and swings through the city to clear his head. When Miles feels he isn’t enough or that he has disappointed his family, he attempts to make up for it by being a hero; however, this just reinforces the division between the two identities.

During his fight with the Warden, Miles is finally able to come to terms with both of his identities coexisting within him—with his dedication to his two communities being what brings the two identities together. After being mentally manipulated by the Warden, Miles is able to bring himself back to the present by recognizing himself as a member of his joined community, which has grown to include Spider-Man. He acknowledges that he is both Miles Morales and Spider-Man, and is able to shake the Warden’s mental attack.

Duty and Heroism

Throughout the novel, Miles repeatedly emphasizes the duty he feels toward his community and family. This motif reinforces the complexity of Miles’s relationships and the guilt he feels for “failing” them. Miles feels indebted and committed to the members of his community who have supported him; he wants to help them and make them proud, partially doing so as the superhero Spider-Man.

Miles’s neighbors all view him as a young genius, and they are proud of his scholarship to Brooklyn Visions Academy (BVA). As such, Miles feels immense pressure to prove himself worthy of their praise. He even disavows his identity as Spider-Man, hanging the mask up for good, in order to maintain his grades. This sense of duty was instilled in him by his father, who believes Miles can’t be a hero without being responsible and taking care of his own neighborhood first; Miles’s punishments have him helping out neighbors and cleaning up his block.

Miles’s sense of duty to his parents is a complex, emotional one. He sees himself as a financial burden to his parents, who have supported his academic endeavors despite barely having the means to do so. These feelings are compounded by his role in the death of Uncle Aaron, and he feels he has to break his paternal family’s cycle of crime. When Miles loses his scholarship, he apologizes to his family and gets a job at the local barber shop to help them pay for his room and board.

In addition to duty, heroism—what it means to save and be saved—is a motif that forces Miles to be introspective and contemplate his actions. As a hero, Miles works to save others from various forms of evil: shoe thieves, mob bosses, and a supernatural prison Warden. He contemplates what it means to help others and save them, but is uncertain what it truly means. After deciding to stop being Spider-Man and focus on school, the question comes up several times. In the end, it is Miles’s sense of duty to his loved ones that helps him answer this question and defeat the Warden. He becomes Spider-Man once more in order to save his community from the Warden’s enslavement; he also wants to save future children from the fate that his father and his friends suffered at the hands of their respective Chamberlains. Miles is able to overcome the Warden’s mental attack by naming the members of his community, claiming them to be a part of him. He defeats the Warden and as a civilian, continues to advocate for himself and his peers by participating in a protest in Mr. Chamberlain’s class.

Cats and Dogs

Cats and dogs are animals often framed as natural opposites, and Jason Reynolds takes advantage of this dynamic to comment on racism and foreshadow Miles’s fight with the Warden. Miles frequently dreams of white cats with multiple tails, and later learns that his incarcerated cousin Austin dreams of them, too. He also notices that Mr. Chamberlain, his racist history teacher, has a tattoo of a white cat on his wrist; the novel’s first physical white cat shows up at Miles’s neighborhood when one of his neighbors is being arrested. Miles slowly connects these images, and during his fight with the Warden, another physical white cat is seated on the latter’s lap. When the two begin to fight, the Warden wields a cat-o’-nine-tails, which transforms into yet another physical white cat, a whip historically used to punish prisoners (and that evokes some of the violence inflicted on enslaved peoples in the past). Overall, the white cat is a motif that alerts Miles of racism, specifically white supremacy. While this connection isn’t explicitly stated in the novel, the Warden’s plan to “break” and imprison people, mostly Black people, likely aligns with white supremacy. The image of a white cat with multiple tails is the Chamberlains’ and the Warden’s calling card, with its color and whip-like tail capturing their specific brand of violence.

Though not framed as a direct opposite to the novel’s white cats, the novel’s dogs are also used to comment on systemic racism. At one point, Mr. Chamberlain equates enslaved peoples to dogs, to people who should be “collared”—even going so far as to use charged language in telling Miles to put a “muzzle” on his justified anger. Later, Miles’s father has friends over, and one of them, Sip, equates bad decisions to dogs; vulnerable youth being “fed” to “dogs” makes life more difficult for them. Like white cats, dogs are linked to violence, but more so control and consequences than a specific hateful attitude.