Pat Fitzgerald
Pat Fitzgerald is one of the twenty-four students held hostage by Charles Decker in Room 16 of Placerville High School. A Black student described as "nearly as black as the ace of spades," Fitzgerald initially maintains a detached, almost amused posture during the crisis, but as the classroom's social order collapses, he sheds his reserve and joins the collective assault on Ted Jones, revealing the volatile undercurrents that the hostage situation has unleashed.
Identity and Initial Posture
Fitzgerald is introduced through his reactions to the bizarre events unfolding around him. When Charlie Decker mocks the school psychiatrist Don Grace in a minstrel-show parody, asking "How does Ah do it?" and claiming "Ali wants mah poor paid shrunk! Ali wants mah soul saved an' made white as snow!" , Fitzgerald laughs and shakes his head, signaling that he recognizes the performance but is not drawn into its racial provocation. His laughter is a quiet, knowing response that sets him apart from the more vocal students. Throughout the early hostage hours, Fitzgerald remains largely silent, observing the power shifts between Decker, the authorities, and his classmates.
Role in the Classroom Dynamic
As the morning progresses and the students begin to turn on each other, Fitzgerald's role becomes more active. When Ted Jones, the class's golden boy, is exposed as having an alcoholic mother and a coercive sexual relationship with Sandra Cross, the classroom's moral center shifts. Fitzgerald is among those who raise their hands when Decker asks who understands the "final order of business" — the need to confront Ted . His hand goes up alongside those of Susan Brooks, Sandra Cross, Grace Stanner, and others, marking his alignment with the emerging group consensus that Ted must be held accountable.
Participation in the Attack on Ted Jones
When the students physically surround Ted, Fitzgerald joins the assault with a focused, almost ritualistic intensity. He is one of those who pins Ted's arms behind his back , physically restraining him as Sandra Cross approaches to unbutton his shirt. Fitzgerald then begins to whack Ted's bare shoulders with a notebook in cadence, chanting, "Soul brother? Be my soul brother? That right? Little Head Start? Little free lunch? That right? Hum? Hum? Brothers? Be soul brothers?" . The taunt is a bitter, ironic inversion of racial solidarity, using the language of brotherhood to mock and degrade the white classmate who had once seemed untouchable. Fitzgerald's participation is not merely physical; it is verbal and symbolic, turning Ted's own assumed superiority back on him.
Change and Ending
After the attack, Fitzgerald is among the students who file out of Room 16 at one o'clock, their hands streaked with black ink from the ink dumped in Ted's hair (E01601-E01602). He is swallowed up by the crowd of police and reporters, his fate after the crisis left unrecorded in the narrative. The letter from Joe McKennedy to Charlie Decker, written months later, notes that something involving Fitzgerald and Dick Keene has been censored as "possibly upsetting to patient" , suggesting that the events of that day had lasting, perhaps violent, consequences for him as well.
Thematic Significance
Fitzgerald's trajectory from silent observer to active participant in the group's violence illustrates the novel's exploration of how ordinary people, under the pressure of a crisis and the pull of group dynamics, can shed their inhibitions and commit acts they would otherwise condemn. His use of racial language to humiliate Ted underscores the way the hostage situation strips away social masks, revealing the resentments and power struggles that simmer beneath the surface of high school life. Fitzgerald is not a leader or a primary instigator, but his willing involvement in the attack shows that the capacity for cruelty is not limited to the obvious villains of the story.
