Rule of the Bone

Chappie is a young homeless man who is struggling to find his place in the world. His actions are heavily informed by his upbringing: He has been abused by his stepfather Ken for years, and his mother has turned a blind eye, focusing instead on the way Chappie acts out. As a result, he frequently becomes angry and sometimes violent because he has no other outlet. He also has a complicated relationship with male authority figures: He is drawn to them but lives in fear of the power they have, ready to give up his own agency in exchange for a sense of belonging or safety. This leads him to several bad situations; it’s only once he meets I-Man that he starts breaking this pattern.

Chappie takes the name Bone early in the novel, setting off his character arc as a person struggling to define themselves and find a place where they belong. This takes on a racial component when he arrives in Jamaica, as he finds that he fits in interpersonally with the Black population even though he technically belongs with his birth father. As he grows more invested in Rastafarian culture and religion, he starts to see that his whiteness is inherently incompatible with who he wants to be.