125 pages • 4 hours read
James Patterson, Kwame AlexanderBecoming Muhammad Ali
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Middle Grade | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Card Tricks
Cassius learns card tricks from his grandfather, who is a huge role model in his life both before and after his death. The card tricks symbolize the way that Cassius uses misdirection in the ring to defeat his opponents and the way that he learns to read people. The card trick in which Cassius pulls a king of hearts bookends the novel, appearing first in Round 3 when Granddaddy Herman performs it and then in Round 9 when Cassius does it at his going-away party before departing for Chicago for the Golden Gloves. When Cassius completes his card trick at the end of the novel, his friends are stunned, wondering how he did it.
Cassius disputes the theories his friends offer for the card trick, explaining, “It’s misdirection. / I get you to commit / to believing / in me / before I even show you / the card trick. / Your expectations / and my reality / all mixed together. / I knew your card / before you knew it” (287). This trick of misdirection speaks to how Cassius charms his audiences and how he lulls his opponents into a false sense of security. He can read them, just as he can tell what someone’s card is before they do.
For Cassius, the card trick also represents the feeling of excellence that Cassius associates with boxing. He struggles in school, and because so much emphasis is placed on education as a way of moving up economically, Cassius likely wonders what he will do if he is not able to do well in school. However, boxing provides him with a future and a direction. He comments on this connection with card tricks when he performs one for Rudy each night, saying that he “tr[ies] to find / the right card / trying to prove / to myself / that I was smart / at something” (72). Even later, when he and Rudy discuss what is next for them after high school, boxing is the only future that Cassius sees, while Rudy considers the military as an option.
The card trick becomes a symbol of how Cassius finds his own way to approach and excel in the world.
Rhythm & Music
A novel in verse is necessarily concerned with rhythm, and Patterson and Alexander ensure that readers get a sense of Cassius’s rhythm at different moments in his early life. They use the pacing of his poems to help paint a picture of the moment. The choice of this form also speaks to the fact that boxing is concerned with a rhythm within the ring. From the start of Cassius’s poetic narration, the form and the pacing of the poems work to build that rhythm, as seen in Poem 1, “Before the Fight.” The final lines, which slide horizontally across the page, illustrate how Cassius is “so fast / I can’t even catch / MYSELF” (5). By formatting the last three lines this way, the authors quicken its pacing and embody the words that Cassius says about his own speed.
Cassius makes explicit connections between his movements in the ring and musicians. For example, in the first fight with Jimmy Ellison, he describes Ellison as coming “out smiling / and swinging, / strong and swift / like Duke Ellington / on the keys, / so I just danced / to the rhythm / in my head” (221). Music parallels the way Cassius moves in the ring, and finding a rhythm is crucial to Cassius’s success as a boxer. It demonstrates how Cassius parses out his opponents and can dance and move his way around them.
The musical artists that Cassius mentions in his narration are always Black musicians, such as Duke Ellington and Chuck Berry. Lucky tell us that Cassius loved music and that “maybe that’s where he got the ideas for his rhymes” (203). The decision to incorporate music and its influence on Cassius is purposeful, and it works to further the goal of illustrating how young Cassius Clay became the adult Muhammad Ali. Additionally, the Black artists and musicians exemplify those who have had to overcome oppression to become the greatest in their respective fields. At one point, Cassius asks Joe Martin if the gym can play music from Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley, showing how he must specifically ask for Black musicians to be included, even though music is always on at the boxing gym.
The Red Bicycle
Semi-biographical in nature, Becoming Muhammad Ali showcases the events in young Muhammad Ali’s life that shaped his future. One key moment occurs when Cassius’s red bicycle is stolen when he is 12, which he identifies as “The Day I Was Born Again” in the title to Poem 60. Wanting to find the thief, Cassius goes to find a police officer, who turns out to be Joe Martin, his future boxing coach. Without his bike being stolen, it is unknown whether Cassius would have taken up the sport and whether he would have become Muhammad Ali. Thus, Patterson and Alexander use the bike as a pivotal symbol, building up the excitement around Cassius receiving this new bike and ultimately channeling that excitement into boxing.
Mentions of Cassius’s desire for a new bike appear as early as Round 2, when Lucky recounts seeing a Schwinn Black Phantom, the sleekest bike that he or Cassius had ever seen. Cassius comments, “That’s the kind of bike I should be riding!”; his words demonstrate that Cassius knows he deserves great things (22). However, because Cassius is Black, 1950s Louisville (and America) treats him as less, documented in this memory when Lucky and Cassius are shooed away by the shop’s owners because they’re suspicious of two Black boys.
Seeing Black and white people as part of a hierarchy is something that Cassius never understands, recognizing that everyone is a human being. However, he, his friends, his family, and his community are all treated as less than they deserve, leading to Cassius’s longing for a brand-new bike. When Cassius finally receives his red bicycle from his parents, he feels like “Commander Cassius / the Leader of Louisville” (121). Therefore, when it is stolen, his anger is blinding, and he immediately sets out to find whoever took it. The theft is less about the bike than it is about what the bike represents for Cassius. It is blatantly unjust that his bike gets stolen, tearing Cassius down from his feeling of finally having gotten what he deserved.
The theft is a turning point because it introduces Cassius to boxing. The bike also serves as a device to show how Cassius’s life evolves. When Corky finally returns the handlebars to Cassius, showing that he stole the bicycle, it solidifies their rivalry. By this time, however, Cassius’s focus has shifted entirely to boxing, which he sees as a means of helping his family to finally get everything they deserve.
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