The Book of Two Ways

According to Dawn, her mother “lived and died by superstitions” (9). Dawn’s mother “put safety pins in my clothing to ward off the evil eye, she taught us never to whistle indoors and if we left the house and had to come back in, we were to look in a mirror or our luck would turn” (49). Dawn mentions her mother’s superstitions often, usually with gentle humor, but without really believing in them. However, there are times in the story when Dawn is threatened by a loss of control and falls back on superstition. Picoult uses superstition to highlight how one reaches for control in situations, like plane crashes, where none is possible. 

Dawn and her brother gently mock their mother’s superstitions, and yet, when Dawn is pregnant, she resorts to them: “I slipped a newly minted penny in each shoe. I slept with a knife under my mattress, to keep away evil spirits. I went into labor two weeks early, but all my superstitious behavior paid off” (138). Dawn believes that carrying superstitions helped Meret to have a successful birth. Earlier, when Dawn moved into Brian’s house, she “hid a baby shoe in the insulation, to ward off evil” even though she “thought it was ridiculous” (201). When something is important enough to her, she falls back on superstition to create a sense of control.

Even Brian, Dawn’s very literal physicist husband, has the feeling that, somehow, his angry thoughts about her caused the plane crash. Dawn is “stunned that scientific, methodical Brian could believe, even in passing, that his dark private thoughts had anything to do with an airplane malfunction” (373). By showing even Brian to be susceptible to superstition, Picoult highlights the ways humans will reach for control, even in the face of their own beliefs.