47 pages • 1-hour read
Brother
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Symbols & Motifs
Music
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of bullying, child abuse, child sexual abuse, child death, graphic violence, sexual content, cursing, death, physical abuse, and emotional abuse.
Music plays a large role in the novel, becoming a motif that represents escape. Misty listens to a variety of records in her room and plays records to counter her violent life. As a woman is being killed outside and screaming “bloody murder,” Misty plays ABBA. The narrator quips, “Misty didn’t like the screaming either, but she absolutely loved Swedish pop” (11). The music both changes the atmosphere and literally covers up the sounds of murder. Instead of listening to the sounds of a brutalized woman, Misty hears upbeat music she loves, which frees her from her family’s farmhouse and puts her somewhere else.
The music store symbolizes a different escape as the Dervish record shop becomes central to Michael’s subtle growth. Within its walls, he experiences a different life and connection with people outside his family, a glimpse of what life would be like if he escaped the Morrows. However, the escape he finds there doesn’t translate to his relationships at home. As Misty tries to have sex with Michael, she plays The Cure’s “A Forest,” music that he got from Alice. With the combination of sex and music and Misty’s attempt at connection, she suggests that they can be romantic partners and run away together. Michael feels differently, as illustrated by how, when played by Misty instead of Alice, it “made his stomach churn” (323). Michael wants to protect Misty, but he doesn’t want a romantic relationship with her. To him, the escape represented by music is connected to Alice.
Children’s Literature
Children’s literature has a recurring role in the novel and comes to represent a different, idealized world for the children of the Morrow family. Lauralynn reads her younger siblings Shel Silverstein’s collection of poems, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories. In addition, Michael often sees the world through children’s stories. He thinks of Alice as the fairytale princess Snow White and also mentions Alice from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871). He also talks to Alice about the movie adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).
The numerous stories and poems contrast the children’s fraught reality, but they are not ubiquitously positive. The titular poem of Silverstein’s collection is about leaving a ghastly place for a pleasant environment. Carroll’s Alice stories transport her from a boring yet harmless reality to a chaotic and dangerous dream world. Milne’s Pooh stories feature a donkey, Eeyore, who is regularly sad, while the stories themselves deal with displacement (Piglet loses his home) and abandonment (Christopher Robin has to leave the animals for school). When Michael pushes back against this gloom, offering a cheery view of Oz, he comments, “I like that Dorothy gets to escape to a place where it’s colorful and magical instead of livin’ in Kansas all her life” (216). Alice counters, “[I]t’s full of danger and sadness and evil” (217), suggesting that no reality is completely safe.
The stories suggest an ideal childhood and comfort Michael with the possibility of a better world. Lauralynn reads them to her siblings to help them escape their violent home life. Yet the literature mentioned doesn’t conceal the frightening aspects of living in the world outside the family. While the general world isn’t as brutal as Michael’s home, it’s not a utopia, and the stories and poems represent the unsettling reality that Michael would have to face if he left the Morrows.
Work
The Morrow family works hard throughout the novel, but the work they do is abduction and murder. To repay the Morrows for making him a part of their family, Michael works for them, reflecting, “In a world where he owed them everything, he often reminded himself that this—the basement, the bodies, the blood—was his bounden duty. He had been saved” (266). As a “brother,” he dutifully participates in their violent murders, seeing himself as being a loyal family member instead of complicit in a series of murders. When Alice asks what he does for a living, Michael tells her that his job is to “catch things” for his family. Michael sees “brother” as a role or occupation, similar to Alice’s job as a worker in a record store.
The motif of work contributes to the themes of The Difference Between Loyalty and Complicity and The Cyclical Nature of Trauma. The nefarious influence of the Morrows prompts Michael to feel like he must follow their lead and do his job without complaint. The collapse between loyalty and complicity makes Michael feel like his work has a higher purpose, as he’s serving people who generously helped him. However, his job inherently inflicts trauma on others. Several times in the narrative, Alice comments, “I should really quit my job” (200, 230, 392). The repetition reinforces Michael’s precarious position. He, too, needs to quit his job, which means he must leave his role as “brother” behind, along with the family.
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