The spooks or the nerd

 Black Swan Green: Mitchell, David: 9780676974973: Amazon.com: Books

The spooks or the nerd

Throughout the book of black swan green, we follow a 13 year old boy named Jason. We see a whole year of his life and the decisions that he makes throughout the novel. Also well throughout the novel we also get to see the two sides of Jason that he has to pick. Either he is with the cool kids and is a spooks, or he is going to be "gay" and be a writer. We see Jason in the novel switch between which of the two he wants to be. There are also two very important people that influence these two choices Jason is making. The first person is Hugo, Jasons 2 year older cousin. The second person is Madame Crommelynck (that name takes forever to write...). These two people were very important for Jason growth as a character and for which side Jason was going to chose.

    The first person I want to talk about is Hugo. During the beginning of the book Jason heavily admires Hugo. I will give a quote from the book when Jason describes Hugo when us the reader first meets him. "Last came Hugo. Hugo fits his body like a glove. He's two years older than me. "Hugo" would be a cursed name for most kids but on Hugo it's a halo." From the description, we can obviously see that Jason admires and looks up to Hugo in the beginning of the novel. Even though Jason admires Hugo, I think that Hugo was playing Jason ego for most of the chapter. Even though after the relatives chapter we don't see Hugo again, his "persona" comes up again in the Spooks chapter. When the group of Spooks kids are trying to preforme a ding dong ditch prank. Jason brings up an method that Hugo did when he ding dong ditches someone. Jason bringing up Hugo's idea shows that Hugo was more of the spooks or "cool kids" mentor for Jason. 

    The second person that I want to talk about is Madame Crommelynck. She is a very interesting character in this story. For starters Crommelynck leaves right at the end of the chapter, never to be seen again. It is like Crommelynck was only there for plot relevance and them when she did was she was supposed to do, she just left. Another very interesting thing about this character is that she is the only character in the book to get Jason to tell her about his life and what is going on at school. Before the chapter that Crommelynck was introduced in, only us the readers knew about Jason struggles and his life at school. One of the main reasons why Crommelynck knows about Jason's life is because of the poems that Jason creates, she reads them. This also proves that Crommelynck is the peom side of Jason. While talking with Crommelynck, she makes Jason question why is he trying to "be cool." It kinda gets Jason to open up and think truly if he wants to be a quote on quote "cool kid."

    the conclude, Black Swan Green has Jason making a bunch of choices as he goes through his 13th year truing fourteen. While there were a lot of other people that guided Jason to take a path for example Julia. I just wanted to dive a bit into the make splitting personalities that Jason was trying to deal with during the book. I found both of these characters very interesting.  

Comments

  1. LindenApril 21, 2026 at 8:51 AM

    Hi Amari! It is really interesting to look at how other characters play as role models that influence Jason in different ways. While Hugo brings up a cool, confident, morally ambiguous side, Madame Crommelynck brings an authentic, unapologetic approach. What's interesting is that they both have their benefits but ultimately fail as mentors. By the end of "Relatives" Jason is disillusioned with Hugo's antics, and Madame Crommelynck is arrested for tax scandals. I wonder what would happened if Madame Crommelynck stayed, maybe it would help him keep developing his authentic self, or maybe it would make his life even more hellish in "Maggot".

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  2. Katie RasmussenApril 22, 2026 at 6:27 PM

    Hi Amari,
    (I was not here on the day this was discussed so forgive me if I say something obvious or wrong)
    I like your connection of Hugo to the Spooks; both put up a front of being cool, but are ultimately bullies (former) or irresponsible cowards (latter). Their inauthenticity contrasts with Mme Crommelynck, who repeatedly pressures Jason to be authentic. I like how you point out that she is the only person Jason can be truly honest with—I think this is in part because her existence breaks social norms so much that Jason doesn't have a "script" to interact with her with, and he respects her, so she uses this to her advantage to write her own script, in which she mentors him. As Lindon mentioned, Mme Crommelynck eventually gets extradited for fraud. This is pretty ironic, and together with the fact that it's pretty heavily implied that she isn't telling Jason the whole truth about that guy who worked with her father but committed suicide over a girl (who was probably her) we get a picture of Mme Crommelynck as somewhat of a hypocrite who values authenticity in others but is still willing to lie to Jason.

    Still, she did influence him to want to go to France, even after she left.
    Is Mme Crommelynck a plot device? Yeah. Does she also have a personality? Yeah. 10/10 weird old lady.

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