Mockingbird

“The gray of outside is inside. Inside the living room. Inside the chest. Inside me.”

Caitlin, who is fascinated by the power of words, feels more than she can explain. In the immediate wake of her brother’s murder, she struggles to define what is wrong with her, or the dimensions of this feeling. The gray she uses (from the gray sheet that covers her brother’s unfinished Eagle Scout project) suggests her ambivalence and uncertainty.

“Dad talks to the world outside the sweater and his voice makes a low-hummy-vibratey feel. I close my eyes and wish I could stay here forever.”

In the opening chapters, Caitlin seeks the protective isolation of private spaces like the hidey-hole in her brother’s room. During the reception at her home after her brother’s funeral, Caitlin seeks to escape from the press of people and the uncertain feelings she has; she finds shelter nuzzling up to her father and slipping under the generous folds of his sweater. Such sanctuary, she will come to understand, is not enough.

“He’s not completely gone

[…]

I don’t want him around in a different way. I want him around in the same way.”

No one entirely understands the reality of death. Caitlin, so precise in her language skills, tries to find words to capture how she feels that her brother is here and not here at the same time. Mrs. Brook tries to explain the power of memory and suggests that Devon is still present, but in a different way. Caitlin is not interested in that.

“I can’t enjoy [recess] because I am surrounded by sharp screaming and it’s too bright and people’s elbows are all pointy and dangerous and it’s hard to breathe.”

The fragmented prose here captures Caitlin’s dislike of the playground’s chaos. The sentence implodes in confusing observations, a run-on that suggests Caitlin’s own apprehensive state of mind as she steps out on the playground.

“If you take the monkey bars and the people and blur them together they get soft and fluffy and kind just like a stuffed animal.”

Caitlin calls this stuffed-animaling. In deliberately skewing her perception when she confronts a challenging or difficult scene (here the school playground), Caitlin can soften reality and give the hard edges a blur that helps insulate her. The hard world becomes more like her stuffed animals.

“Books are not like people. Books are safe.”

Caitlin perceives the real world with real people as a threat. In her reading, Caitlin achieves effortless separation from the world that confuses her, scares her, and makes her inexplicably sad.

“My Dictionary. TV. Computer.”

These are Caitlin’s friends. Given that Caitlin will ultimately experience the generous comfort of others and find her way to friends, this moment marks the low point in her evolution. Mrs. Brook encourages Caitlin to try group work, suggesting that she might enjoy making friends. Caitlin insists that she has friends, listing these three.

“I wonder if this means I have a friend.”

Having a friend would be a new experience for Caitlin. Erskine has already shown how Caitlin’s classmates treat her. The sad-eyed Michael represents Caitlin’s pivot point. After sharing a gummy worm with Michael and chatting for a few moments, Caitlin wonders whether this happy feeling she has may have something to do with making Michael her friend.

“How can any word be more special than Heart.”

In working on her research project, inspired in part by Josh’s graphic description of her brother’s injuries, Caitlin discovers how complicated and valuable the heart is. In her written report, Caitlin capitalizes the word heart, which her teacher objects to because only “important” words are capitalized. Caitlin’s answer indicates her growing understanding of empathy.

“I like things in black and white. Black and white is easier to understand. All that color is too confusing.”

Caitlin enjoys reconstructing reality into simple binaries. Her fondness for (literally) black-and-white movies suggests that such films symbolically offer obvious villains and noble heroes. Although she will ultimately make her peace with color and realize how rich it makes reality, here she rejects color and retreats into the black-and-white world of simplifications.

“And it’s like his friends are tied to him with strings because they run to him from all directions until they all end up in front of me.”

This moment on the playground has unsuspected import. When Michael gathers his friends about Caitlin, she feels the energy and thrill of others. She later compares herself to Snow White surrounded by her cohort of happy dwarves. Caitlin is suddenly, wonderfully not alone, and Michael seems to command these friends effortlessly. Friendship suddenly feels right to Caitlin.

“His name is Devon. No. His name WAS Devon. Now it’s Devon-who-is-dead.”

The transition between the two states of being—“is” and “was”—confuses and intrigues Caitlin. She struggles to understand the idea of memory: how a person can exist vividly and happily in one’s mind despite their death. Caitlin, given her fascination with words, tries to find the best way to describe this.

“Yes […] It looks bad. It’s purple and puffy and really gross.”

Caitlin understands from Mrs. Brook that making friends involves many virtues: kindness, communication, sacrifice, and honesty. However, when she tries to be honest with Rachel, who is concerned about her looks after her bike accident, Caitlin only ends up offending her and angering most of her class. Her actions are honest but not empathetic.

“But there is something wrong with his smile. I stare into his eyes […] They don’t look happy like the photos of happy eyes Mrs. Brook has shown me.”

In experiencing eye contact with a stranger, Caitlin grasps that despite her reluctance to make eye contact, eyes reveal much about a person. In this case, Caitlin rightly perceives the sadness the otherwise jovial art teacher feels. People, Caitlin learns, are not as simple as her charts depicting emotions.

“I start crying and run down the aisle screaming for Dad and even though I find him I cry all the way to the car and then all the way home and for a longtime in my hidey-hole.”

Caitlin begins to learn the difficult dynamic of empathy. She has pushed her father into committing to completing Devon’s Eagle Scout project, not noticing how disturbed he is by her request.

“You have to try even if it’s hard and you think you can never do it and you just want to scream and hide and shake your hands over and over and over.”

Caitlin’s words of encouragement to her despondent father, who resists committing to the Eagle Scout project, epitomize her own adjustment to life after Devon. Do it, she says, even if makes you scream and want to hide.

“You’re the kind of special that’s a little weird.”

Caitlin, given her interest is words, initially is happy when the girls she tries to sit with in the lunch room call her special. She misunderstands the sarcastic way in which they are using the word. This moment gives the reader some insight into how a child with Asperger’s must negotiate the world.

“I do want to be in a group.”

After the difficulty Caitlin had when her teacher first announced a group project, here Caitlin reveals how much she has taken to heart the advice Mrs. Brook gives her about making friends. She eagerly volunteers to work with others even before the teacher explains the assignment.

“Honey…we have to live in the real world. I like you as Caitlin.”

Caitlin tries valiantly to make her world—her family, her friends, herself—fit the template of To Kill a Mockingbird. She sees that if she can trim and cut her world to fit the world of the movie, she can avoid the joys and terrors of the real world. Her father tells her something that never occurs to her: Caitlin is lovable as Caitlin.

“So I kneel down on the other side of Josh and pat his back too and tell him it’s okay the same way Devon used to tell me and Dad still tells me.”

The moment when Caitlin and Michael both console an angry and frustrated Josh embodies empathy. Caitlin initially misperceives him—she thinks he is bullying Michael when Josh is actually trying to help him off the monkey bars—but comes to understand that Josh is ostracized in a way similar to herself.

“You should join the art club in middle school.”

This marks a significant change for Caitlin. Previously her sketching was a way of isolating herself and keeping herself safe from others. When she agrees to provide illustrations for the yearbook, a classmate also encourages her to join the art club the following year. Her talent now gives her the opportunity to make friends.

“But I can’t stop crying. For Devon. Because of what happened to Devon […] all of a sudden my gulp-crying turns into gulp-laughing because I realize something.”

Caitlin cries but not for herself. Rather, she is caught up in emotions when she thinks about how much her brother lost in the shooting—all the chances he will now never have. She laughs not because she finds her brother’s death amusing but because she knows now how empathy feels.

“Please stand up. I think everyone wants to see you.”

In her idea of giving both herself and her father some closure through completing the mission chest, Caitlin is also responsible for aiding the emotional recovery of her community. In donating the beautiful chest to the school, Caitlin becomes a part of their closure. Her empathy merits this standing ovation.