The Silent Boy

“Our cook was named Naomi, and she was also brown. Everything has a color, I remember thinking. I could not think of a single thing that had no color, except the water in my bath.” 

Race is not addressed in the novel other than this one reference to Naomi. Katy notices that she and Naomi have different skin colors, but as we see in this quotation, she has no racist or prejudiced thoughts associated with Naomi. Katy is, at this point, a purely innocent child.

“They had found her out in the garden. That’s what they told Austin: that his mother had gone outside to pick some tomatoes for lunch, and when she looked down, she saw a lovely baby girl there.” 

This is Katy’s first explanation of how children are born. Mrs. Thatcher and Mrs. Bishop are very concerned with impropriety and do not want the children to know anything about sex, pregnancy, or childbirth. This is very confusing for Katy, who is too smart to fully believe that a baby could grow out of a garden.

“But when we rounded the bend and I saw Peggy Stoltz’s home, I knew that her summers were not carefree ones. It was tidy but stark. It was poor […] there was nothing for her here.” 

Katy sees Peggy’s life as a poor girl as “stark,” as if there is nothing for Peggy in it. Katy strongly believes girls should be educated and have many opportunities. She identifies more with Nell’s dreams of becoming a movie star than Peggy’s dreams of domesticity. This way of thinking helps Katy feel better about taking Peggy away from her farm and family.

“He don’t go to school. He never could. He’s touched.” 

Peggy uses the word “touched” to describe Jacob’s condition because it has no name or diagnosis at this time in history. His differences are not welcomed in the school system, so he never receives any education.

“But I heard Mrs. Bishop tell Mother that she was afraid Nell would leave them. She had just turned sixteen but she had ambitions, Mrs. Bishop said, as if ambitions meant measles, something we should try not to catch.” 

The ambitions referenced here are Nell’s efforts to date men who have more status and money than her so she can leave her job as a hired girl. She also dreams of changing her name to Evangeline Emerson and becoming a movie star. Mrs. Bishop and Mrs. Thatcher see Nell as a foolish girl whose ambitions will do her no good. Katy thinks she is fascinating.

“Now you won’t mind if I show my daughter? She wants to be a doctor.” 

Dr. Thatcher allows Katy to see him treating patients, even men working at the mill with large incisions and stitches. She is not treated like an ordinary little girl. She learns a great deal because her father is willing to teach her, and she never questions her ability to become a doctor because he doesn’t question it either.

“[H]e touched the necks of the horses and made a sound to them, though he said no human goodbye to us. A dog dashed to the buggy to greet him; and I saw, as he turned and walked to his own barn, carrying the flour, that two cats ran out from the shadows there, rubbed against him, matched their steps to his, and followed him.” 

Everywhere Jacob goes he connects with animals. They show no fear of him, they bond with him, and they seem to communicate with him better than humans. The novel suggests that if people could reserve judgment the way animals do, they could potentially communicate with Jacob. The emphasis on speaking, reading, and writing in human communication puts Jacob at a steep disadvantage.

“Jacob is not a deaf-mute at all. He can hear. And Father says that though he doesn’t talk like you and me, there is meaning to the sounds he makes.” 

Katy and her father both recognize that Jacob makes sounds with intent to communicate. While most of society deems him unintelligent and unable to communicate, they both take the time to try to understand Jacob.

“I thought about his holding newborn kittens, so tiny, touching their fur with his fingers, and then lowering them into the creek and holding them under. The kindest thing, Peggy had said.”

Katy has a hard time reconciling this terrible act with the sweet and gentle boy she knows. She tries to understand how ending a creature’s life might actually be the kindest thing. Peggy explains that it is just part of farm life, something Katy really can’t comprehend.

“[A]nd when he began to explain it to me, how the baby grew there, I could see that it all made sense; it was exactly right, much more right than finding it in the dirt with the cutworms and slugs under the tomatoes and summer squash.” 

Finally, Katy learns how babies are actually made. Her father is not afraid to teach her about more difficult topics. He treats her like an equal and respects her intelligence. Although her mother may not be comfortable discussing the same topics, it is better for Katy to have the correct information.

“Meticulously I picked each raisin out and dropped it into the bushes beside the porch. My mother saw me doing this and smiled, creating a secret between us.” 

Katy’s mother is kind, loving, and eternally patient. She never expresses irritation or raises her voice, unlike Jessie or Austin’s parents. Katy is treated with immense respect and never shamed, and as a result she herself is kind and unjudgmental toward other people.

“‘My land, look there in the corner of the hanky,’ she said, and ran her finger across the embroidered HWT. ‘His initials. I see that every time I iron, and think how wonderful it is to have your name be so important.’” 

Peggy notices the finer things in the Thatcher home, such as Dr. Thatcher’s embroidered hanky and the gold-rimmed cream dish in the kitchen. She feels the Thatchers are more important than she is and thus deserving of these fine things. She notices what is sophisticated yet is resigned and humble in her position.

“Peggy had taken Father’s clothes away, the ones he had worn all night at the hospital, but the smell from them remained. Peggy told me later it was the smell of burned people on him.” 

Dr. Thatcher treats the burned men at Schuyler’s Mill just before Katy learns about the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. Her father’s experience and these visceral reminders of the fire help her empathize with the factory girls. This is one of the first distant tragedies that Katy has connected so deeply with. This experience becomes a rite of passage wherein she learns about the condition of women in general and the feeling of grieving for someone with whom you empathize.

“‘Jessie says it’s for crazy people. She said imbeciles and lunatics and madmen.’ Father smiled. ‘Those are just other words for people who are ill,’ he explained. ‘Ill in their minds. And at the asylum, people take care of them.’” 

Jessie’s words represent the general public’s thinking. The mentally ill in this era are severely misunderstood and feared. They are kept locked up and isolated. Dr. Thatcher, however, views them the same as any other patient: ill and in need of care.

“I realized he were talking to me as if I were grown up.” 

Katy and her father often have serious, intellectual conversations. He will discuss topics with her that her mother and Peggy won’t. Katy recognizes that this is unusual, and she feels very privileged. Katy is particularly mature and kind for her age, probably because of the way her father treats her.

“Speaking of Peggy’s sister made me think, suddenly, of something uncomfortable I had seen in the Bishops’ barn. I willed the thought from my mind.” 

Katy references witnessing something in the barn many times before she reveals what it was. She understands that no one will want to hear about what she saw and that it will become a big problem if she tells. She consistently forces the thoughts and images out of her mind, only to have them resurface again and again, like all traumatic memories do. Here again we see Katy having a highly influential developmental experience. This first introduction to romance and sex will undoubtedly shape her perception of male-female relationships.

“We had never talked. Indeed, I had never heard Jacob speak. But we had made sounds together—I thought of it as our special kind of singing, there in the stable—and sometimes I had walked beside him and his dog for a way, through the alley behind our house, when he left to roam off to other places that I did not know about.” 

Katy is so interested in understanding Jacob that she tries to join him in his special language-making. She particularly enjoys his sense of freedom as he roams and finds places that she doesn’t know. She wishes for the same freedom and wonders what it would be like to be free all day rather than at school.

“He raised it from a puppy […] Its mother died when she had a litter, and all the pups died but this one. We didn’t even know for a long time. Jacob hid it in the barn and fed it cow’s milk, dipping a rag in so the puppy could suck. Pa said he probably had to do it ten times a day, to keep the pup alive.” 

The novel repeatedly shows us that Jacob is a kind, caring boy. He is very skilled at rescuing and raising infant animals that have been abandoned by their mothers. This primes us to believe that his intentions were good when he brought Nell’s baby to the Thatcher home.

“There was an awareness to Jacob’s being.” 

Jacob is not described as one dimensional; he is aware and perceptive, and allows for connection with those who try. People with autism today are likewise considered highly sensitive and aware.

“But girls that age, I thought, should be in school, learning geography and elocution. Not in pictures. And certainly not in a burning shirtwaist factory like the other Mary.” 

Katy is forming her own opinions about what it means to be a girl and developing values around these ideas. What once seemed exciting (the pictures) now seems inappropriate to her burgeoning moral compass. Katy is starting to recognize that school, or education, is the difference-maker in a girl’s life.

“I decided I could do it all, and would. I would go to college. Then I would become a doctor and I would marry Austin Bishop and have children one day, and maybe would travel too. I thought I might go to Africa and China and all the places we studied in school.” 

From her newly developed values, Katy makes a plan for her life, a plan to have and do it all. She is representative of the early feminist movement. She achieves what she wants because she comes from a well-to-do family that supports her dreams.

“Austin’s father captured the two of them in that moment when the sun was shining and they had dreams, still, and thought that their lives could be what they shaped.” 

Unlike Katy, Nell and Paul do not get to live out their dreams. Mr. Bishop’s photo captures their last moments of innocence before their accidental pregnancy sets their lives on negative trajectories from which they never recover.

“I thought it served Paul Bishop right to be at a school where there would be no Turkey Trot. Now there would be no girl for him to dance it with, and no Nellie, either, to kiss in the barn and sneer at after.” 

Katy feels that Paul treats Nell poorly and deserves any punishment he gets. She is aware that Nell has less power and less opportunity, so it is unfair of Paul to take advantage of her. Katy’s recognition of Paul’s sneering attitude is a sign of her unusual emotional maturity.