Mockingbird

The Disney film Bambi and the Gregory Peck film To Kill a Mockingbird, which are both central to Caitlin’s perception of the world, deal with the difficult theme of the end of innocence. In both works, characters too young to learn such lessons must come to terms with the reality of death, the insufficiency of love, and the experience of helplessness and vulnerability. When Caitlin calls the day Devon was shot “The Day Our Life Fell Apart” (63), that phrase summarizes the coming-of-age novel. Caitlin must come to terms with Devon’s death; Bambi and To Kill a Mockingbird show her that running back home to her hidey-hole cannot work.

The first time Caitlin watches Bambi with her brother she is only five, and yet she understands that Bambi’s mother is dead even as Devon, three years older than she was, insists that Bambi’s mother will come back. Caitlin gets agitated at her brother, knowing that their mother died and did not come back; she understands death in a literal sense but hasn’t fully processed it emotionally, so she misreads Devon’s tearful denial as actual ignorance. Later, Caitlin recalls her fascination with the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird in which Atticus has to shoot a rabid dog right in front of Scout. Caitlin struggles to understand what Atticus tells Scout: how it is a sin to kill something innocent and harmless but a responsibility when something is a threat. As her talent to sketch in charcoal (black-and-white drawings without detail or color) suggests, Caitlin sees a great deal but understands relatively little.

The end of Caitlin’s childhood is marked by her coming to see how complex the world really is. She learns that if her father is no Atticus Finch, he is a complex person whose vulnerability reveals his strength. She learns that her brother is both with her—a presence that gives her comfort—and buried next to her mother, who is also both with her and gone. Those are difficult lessons for Caitlin, but her embrace of a world rich with colors in the closing pages suggests that if she is no longer as innocent, she can nevertheless still be happy and fulfilled. As she says in the novel’s last line, “I smile and begin” (232). Importantly the day is partly sunny and partly cloudy, a suggestion of the world Caitlin now embraces—not a world of black and white but a world of black/white with lots of colors. 

Early on, Caitlin, who is only 10, struggles to define how she feels in the weeks after her brother’s murder. As she seeks her usual refuge—deep in the soft cushions of her sofa with the heavy cushions securely over her head—she says, “[T]here’s a weight on me that holds me down and keeps me from floating and falling and floating and falling like a [one-winged] bird” (3). Unknowingly, Caitlin here defines the dynamics of grief. That feeling of yearning to escape only to fail is the emotional essence of grief itself. For Caitlin, grief is like a wounded bird struggling to fly away and yet unable to find such freedom.

Because she was so young when her mother died, grief and loss are new to her, and because of her developmental disability, she struggles to understand change. Nevertheless, Caitlin’s Asperger’s also compels to pursue understanding of what initially puzzles her. This creates friction, surrounded as Caitlin is by schoolfriends and even teachers who would prefer not to dwell on the shootings, as well as a father who prefers to grieve without talking about it. The tension is not solely the result of Caitlin’s Asperger’s, however; rather, it reflects the fact that individuals inevitably process loss differently. The subplot involving Michael and his father is a reminder of this. Michael misunderstands his father’s invitations to play football, thinking that his father is “happy” and blaming himself for not being similarly unaffected by their shared loss.

The tragedy in the novel is that because of the school shooting, kids must try to understand what even adults struggle to come to terms with. Caitlin, who believes in her dictionary, finds that “grief” resists definition. In her efforts to understand how she feels, this yo-yoing between wanting to escape and being pulled down to what she wants to escape from, Caitlin finds comfort in her relationship with Michael, who struggles with the same feelings. His solution is to stay apart—to allow the sadness, helplessness, or anger or to take hold of him.

In the end Caitlin understands that grief makes sense only when it is overcome. In the restoration of her relationship with her father and in the completion of the Eagle Scout project, that grief subsides. Caitlin understands what she cannot see in the opening pages: That grief, which seems amorphous, has a shape, a limit, and an end.