43 pages • 1 hour read
Anne CassidyLooking for JJ
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Guilt, Innocence, and the Possibility of Change
Throughout the novel, Alice wrestles with complicated questions about guilt, innocence, and the possibility of change. Having committed murder as a 10-year-old-girl, Alice is branded as a killer and sent to a correctional facility for six years. The outside world condemns her as a monster and argues that she should get much harsher treatment than she has received. When she is released, the media continues to hound her, publishing sensational stories about the old crime. For most people, Alice is branded as a wholly bad person because she killed another child.
Alice wrestles with guilt as she tries to build a new life for herself. While she deeply regrets her actions, she tries not to make excuses for herself; she admits that she did want to hurt the girl she killed and that she was angry and lashing out in rage. In everyday life, Alice remains a polite and mild-mannered young adult. While Alice herself takes responsibility for her crime, she does not think of herself as a fundamentally evil person. She tries desperately to escape her dark past and to begin a new life with a fresh start. Other people around her, such as her foster mother Rosie and her probation officer Jill, know about her past and still see her as a normal, if flawed, teenage girl. People who are meeting her for the first time, such as her coworkers at the coffee shop, her boyfriend Frankie, and even the detective searching for her, all register her as a normal person, not depraved.
By telling the story from the perspective of a murderer, we come to understand the chain of events that led to the death of an innocent girl. While Jennifer cannot entirely be absolved of her crime, we begin to see how someone could commit such an act when they are overwhelmed, neglected, and without resources. Through Alice and Jennifer’s narration, we come to see the murder as a desperate but understandable action, rather than the act of a monster. The novel also raises important questions about personal responsibility and childhood and intergenerational trauma. The distraught state that leads to Jennifer murdering another young girl is largely a product of her mother’s neglect and poor parenting. In addition, Jennifer’s mother herself had an unsupportive parent and dealt with teenage pregnancy and the responsibility of motherhood at a young age. The novel seems to suggest that, while it is easy to condemn criminals from an outsider’s perspective, when we learn more about their lives and internal states, many crimes are no longer black and white.
Childhood Trauma and Neglect
In the flashbacks that detail Jennifer’s upbringing, the novel paints a portrait of childhood neglect and abandonment and its devastating effects on a young girl. Jennifer is subject to financial precarity, frequent moves, an unstable home environment, and few positive role models. She usually moves too frequently to make friends or connections in the community and has no stable or supportive family members. Jennifer’s childhood is chaotic, and she must learn to fend for herself from an early age. While her mother often demonstrates love and affection, she is childish, immature, and unable to truly care for her daughter. By the end of the novel, Carol’s influence is actively harmful to her daughter, as she attempts to persuade her to engage in childhood pornography and perhaps even future acts of child prostitution.
The trauma and neglect that Jennifer experienced as a young child led directly to her violent outbursts and eventual crime. Jennifer feels powerless and alone, unable to control her situation in life or to seek help from her mother or other adults. Jennifer doesn’t have someone with whom she can talk about her worries, feelings, and desires. Because we have an insider’s perspective into Jennifer’s backstory, we can understand how and why she committed murder. In the present, Alice is still haunted by the events of her past, which include not only the murder but also her troubled childhood. She still wrestles with her relationship with her mother, even though she is in some way aware that her mother never had her best interests at heart. By the end of the novel, Alice finds herself unable to escape the consequences of the neglect and abuse she experienced as a child. While she still can chart a new path forward and start a new life with a new identity, the trauma she experienced as a young girl will always mark her.
Mothers, Daughters, and the Maternal Bond
Throughout the novel, we are introduced to several different paradigms of motherhood and mothers’ relationships with their daughters. First, we learn about Jennifer’s mother, Carol, and her initially loving, but ultimately harmful, relationship with her daughter. Carol is often absent from her daughter’s life and is a poor role model who is unable to effectively care for her daughter. In contrast, Alice’s foster mother Rosie is the epitome of maternal care and nurturing. Rosie is calm, loving, and takes care of Alice even though she has only known her for a few months. For the first time in her life, Alice has a stable home with a loving parental figure.
We are also introduced to several other mothers throughout the story, including Lucy’s mother, Michelle’s mother, and Frankie’s mother. To varying extents, these characters all make sure that their children are safe, loved, and provided for in a way that is absent from Jennifer’s life. She is jealous of these characters for their stable home environments and wishes that her mother could provide something similar. By interacting with these families, Jennifer comes to realize how impoverished her own familial relationships are. Rather than trying to parent, instruct, or care for Jennifer, Carol simply leaves her to her own devices. Carol plays the role of a big sister much more than that of a mother and is often irresponsible and immature regarding Jennifer. The story seems to suggest that strong and nurturing parental figures are essential for healthy childhood development. Without the loving influence of a dedicated parent, a child like Jennifer can develop lasting behavioral issues and suffer trauma.
While the story doesn’t explicitly mention it, there is also a conspicuous lack of father figures throughout the novel. Jennifer’s own father is absent and unknown. Similarly, Lucy’s father has left her mother to raise three children by herself. Alice’s foster mother Rosie is unmarried, and there are never any significant father figures in Alice’s life. In the novel, this lack of fathers places further importance on the maternal bond as one of the most important relationships in a child’s life.
