Breakout

As Nora, Lizzie, Elidee, and even Owen realize the adults are no more able to make sense of things than they are, they undergo some coming-of-age moments, highlighting Young People’s Ability to Confront Social Issues. Though it later turns out that Lizzie’s grandmother had good reason to be upset about the breakout, her tears prompt the girls to realize that “[a]ll the parents are [scared]. It’s messed up when the people in charge of telling you everything’s going to be okay are as afraid as you are” (180). As a result, the young characters take on adult roles. Owen’s attempts to capture the inmates himself provide comic relief as the older characters grapple with serious issues, but they also demonstrate his need to take action as a way to feel a sense of control. Elidee’s texts with her mother, while they demonstrate the closeness and love between them, also develop her determination to handle her problems herself, to “keep it together and stay focused” (218) without giving her mother reason to worry. This contrasts sharply with the struggles and pressures she reveals in her poems and in her letters to Troy. As the characters realize their elders don’t have all the answers, they take more responsibility onto themselves to form their own opinions and actions.

This section develops The Media’s Role in Shaping Perception, particularly regarding law enforcement. Though well-intentioned, Bill Tucker’s automatic defense of the corrections officers in the newspaper, the mobilization of students in manufacturing tokens of gratitude in class, Mrs. Jablonski’s admiration of police as “boys in blue” (193) in Lizzie’s recording, and the sign on the church door all connote a belief in the “thin blue line,” or the idea that the police are the only barrier between society and chaos. Mrs. Jablonski’s pronouncement that “unless you work in a place like that, you have no business questioning those who do” (194) mirrors this sentiment and is echoed later in a conversation between Bill Tucker and Nora. Nora’s suggestion that journalists are supposed to ask hard questions and her subsequent conversation with Sean about Mrs. Jablonski’s racism demonstrate Young People’s Ability to Confront Social Issues. This is sparked by Mrs. Roy’s treatment of Elidee during gym class and continues to grow as Nora tries—but still often fails—to see the biases she has until now overlooked.

Nora demonstrates her Racism, Bias, and Privilege when she judges Elidee for not participating in sign-making: “The troopers guarding our school are keeping Elidee just as safe as everybody else, so I think it’s crummy not to say thank you” (162). Though she takes time to wonder about Elidee’s reasoning, she fails to see how reports of prisoners being beaten might affect Elidee’s perspective, which is revealed in her letter to Troy: “I hope you’re all right. I hope you don’t know anything, and I hope the guards believe you when you say so” (176). Cole’s harassment of Elidee stems from the same bias; by contrast, the “thank you” bag Elidee makes after Trooper Elliott defends her shows her ability to see people as individuals rather than labeling them as part of a whole.

Lizzie’s grandmother’s arrest is another inciting incident that forces the characters–and readers–to consider several thematic issues, including the role of media in shaping perception and how the dynamics of privilege in Wolf Creek label insiders and outsiders. The media is quick to label Priscilla a criminal, even when all they know is that she showed kindness to inmates by giving them brownies. This act, the novel suggests, shifts her immediately out of the Wolf Creek community and into the inmate community. Because of this sudden reversal, Lizzie understands what it feels like to know someone cast in the role of the villain. However, Nora’s faith that “everything will be straightened out” and “all she did is make them her not-so-secret-recipe minty brownies like she makes us” (224) illustrates her willingness to give Priscilla the benefit of the doubt because she is part of the town’s white community and is known to be a good person. The section contrasts this with several of the other characters’ assumptions that inmates must be bad people because they did bad things, again marking The Fear of Otherness as a basis for bias.