The Things She's Seen

Ambelin Kwaymullina, Ezekiel KwaymullinaFiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Birds

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism against Indigenous Australians.

Some Aboriginal people consider birds to be “carriers of story” and important messengers with critical lessons about how to conduct relationships respectfully (“First Nations Storytelling.” Australian Museum). The crow, in particular, is seen as a powerful bird; it is an ancestral being, a trickster, and a cultural hero that is featured in many traditional stories. In one Taungurung story, for example, Crow is in charge of the winds, and in a Wurundjeri story, Crow steals fire and gives it to humans (“Creation Stories.” Taungurung Land & Waters Council).

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Throughout the novel, Michael and Beth express concerns about how the children were treated in the home, and in Catching’s story, the children are represented as “[b]irds of all colors” who are trapped in a cage by one of the Feeds (166). They beg Crow and Catching to free them, and the message conveyed by these symbolic captive birds is that the government is neglecting their welfare, for as an entity, the government is insufficiently respectful of the needs of living beings.

Sarah Blue, in the form of Crow, uses fire to destroy the children’s home, making use of the destructive but ultimately necessary “gift” of fire, and this act deliberately mirrors the Aboriginal legend stating that the figure of Crow once gave fire to humans. In the novel, the character of Crow is also associated with rising winds that carry messages (as when the wind warns the children about the fire) and accompany stories (as the wind seems to ender the hospital during Catching’s story). In The Things She’s Seen, Crow ultimately represents a deep spiritual power born of suffering, for she is capable of accomplishing both benevolent actions and terrible violence in the name of justice.

Colors

Each of the main female characters in the story—Beth, Catching, and Sarah—is identified with a specific color. Beth’s color is yellow, while Catching’s is green, and Sarah’s is blue. All of these colors and more come together in the afterworld that the three girls are bound to enter at the end of the novel. This afterworld, often referred to as “The Dreaming” among Aboriginal societies, is a place where the ancestors’ spirits wait to welcome those who have died. Significantly, Beth knows that she will find her mother here and that she will be reunited with the source of her own “butterfly” spirit and strength. The spiritual strength of ancestral communities—particularly that of the women —is an important aspect of the novel’s color symbolism.

Chapters 18-20 make the details of this relationship clear. In these chapters, Catching receives the dead girls’ advice about catching her negative emotions and counteracting them with positive emotions in order to restore her colors—her hope and strength. Because this essential advice comes from dead girls, the novel indicates the central importance of inheriting the wisdom of one’s ancestors. Catching ultimately turns to the courage and enduring hope of her grandmothers, in order to get rid of her grayness and regain her colors. The process she undergoes explicitly associates grayness with negative feelings like despair, fear, and shame and connects brighter colors with positive emotions like joy, courage, and pride. These chapters therefore suggest that “colors” are positive emotions that flow from the women of the past into the women of the present. Although many different forces may try to steal these positive emotions and replace them with grayness, it is important to remember that “[c]olors can come back” (157) if a person is willing to do the emotional work required to “catch” and replace the sources of grayness with something more positive.

Fire

Although the novel’s first mention of the fire that destroys the children’s home places fire imagery in a negative, destructive, context, fire takes on a much more nuanced role in The Things She’s Seen. Beth, for example, comments that her Aunty June once told her that it was impossible to be sad around Beth’s mother because “she radiated happiness like a fire radiated heat” (13). This description portrays fire as a source of life-preserving warmth and comfort. The novel therefore emphasizes fire’s dual nature, acknowledging that flame can be life-preserving or life-threatening, depending on the circumstances.

Fire also symbolizes the dual nature of intense emotion. Like fire, emotions such as anger and love can have positive or negative impacts. Love sustains and comforts people, but it can also be a snare, as Beth discovers when she is unable to move on to her afterlife. Likewise, anger can be pointlessly destructive, but it can also be a righteous force that fuels necessary change in the world. For example, Catching describes her own anger in response to other people’s unfairness as fire that “lights [her] blood with flames” (27), and her mother teaches her the names of her matrilineal ancestors in order to help her “control fire” (27). It is important to note that in this example, the flame of Catching’s anger is not something to be rejected; instead, she must simply grow strong enough to properly wield it. This strength will be inspired by the strength of the women in her family line.

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The novel’s fire symbolism also indicates the power of hope and renewal. After Catching regains her capacity for hope, she and Sarah have the power to fight against the Fetchers and the Feeds. Catching describes the return of her emotional power as being like fire, and this is when the actual fire at the children’s home begins. Although the fire is destructive in a literal sense, it symbolically clears away the lingering evil and acts as a cleansing form of justice that allows for the creation of a better future. The fire frees the children from the home, ends Bell and Sholt’s reign of terror, and gives Michael new purpose as he embraces the investigation and moves on from his own grief and pain.