Criss Cross

Throughout Chapters 10-17, the primary characters’ friendly conversations and alone time help them Search for Meaning and Understanding. As adolescents, Debbie, Hector, Lenny, Patty, and Phil are trying to make sense of how chance, fate, and love relate to their developing identities. When they are sharing time and space, they exchange ideas and thought experiments—pastimes which shape their evolving perceptions of the world. When they’re alone, the characters’ minds shift into musings on science, music, and relationships—streams of consciousness which convey their desire to believe in something definite.

The repeated scenes of dialogue throughout this excerpt convey the primary characters’ curious minds and spirits. For example, when Patty and Debbie are lying awake together in Chapter 10, they discuss soulmates, serendipity, identity, and romance. These topics of conversation help the friends navigate their adolescent realities. They also prove that Patty and Debbie have philosophical minds. For example, Patty and Debbie ask each other their thoughts on chance and fate—revealing that they’re skeptical of using God to explain life’s coincidences:

I think it does make people feel better. That’s when they say, “God works in mysterious ways.” Although no one wants to be the one He’s working on that way. It makes people feel like there is some really worthwhile reason that they’re having such a crappy life. And like they will be rewarded later (86).

Patty and Debbie are living in 1970s Middle America. This historical era is defined by sweeping shifts in popular culture, political views, and religious ideals. The adolescents’ conversation originates from and aligns with their temporal context. Just as cultural changes have influenced their style of dress, these same changes are influencing the friends’ viewpoints on religion and culture. Although they do discuss crushes and hairstyles, Patty and Debbie’s musings on God and fate reveal their depth of character. They’re eager to explore complex concepts in order to better understand themselves and their ever-changing reality.

Chapters 10-17 launch a series of formal shifts in the narrative, which propels the Seldem adolescents’ Journey Towards Self-Discovery. While Chapters 1-9 appear in a typical narrative prose style, Chapters 10-17 introduce various alternate structures. For example, Chapter 10 appears in the form of a screenplay, presenting only Patty and Debbie’s lines of dialogue and omitting any contextualizing narration. Chapter 11 incorporates Hector’s song lyrics and Chapter 14 fractures into a series of haikus, fragmented thoughts, and italicized memories. The surrounding chapters also incorporate photographic imagery, illustrations, and sheet music—all of which act as tangible artifacts from the characters’ lives. For example, the images of the trash at the ravine visually represent Hector’s walk through town while the drawing of a donkey in a football jersey illustrates Debbie’s thoughts about a spell being placed on Dan. These formal images create a patchwork effect and a playful, searching tone. Debbie, Hector, Lenny, Patty, and Phil are collecting visual, aural, conversational, and written ephemera from their surroundings to formulate what they believe and who they are. Each experience, dialogue, or adventure they have feels like a pivotal moment in their coming of age. The narrative structure enacts their attempts to document and process their lives in real time.

The narrative also begins to merge the primary characters’ independent storylines. For example, the third-person narrator shifts between all five of their storylines in Chapter 16. This formal choice emphasizes the simultaneity of Debbie’s, Hector’s, Lenny’s, Patty’s, and Phil’s pastimes. In the course of a single evening, Lenny helps his father move furniture, Debbie does her homework, Hector writes new songs, Patty calls Debbie on the phone, and Phil plays basketball. The convergence of these disparate scenes underscores the Importance of Friendship and Connection. Even when the friends aren’t in the same space, their experiences inform one another. No matter what they’re doing, all five characters are seeking grounding, understanding, excitement, or escape.

Community is an important element of self-discovery in these chapters. The characters’ hometown, Seldem, unites them even when they feel isolated or alone. Chapter 17 reiterates this notion by placing the five main characters in the same physical setting: the local Tastee-Freez. When they’re all here, random events transpire to draw them even closer together. In particular, this scene initiates another image of Debbie’s lost necklace. The piece of jewelry has recurred throughout the novel, shifting from character to character. This motif underscores the interconnection of the characters’ lives. They aren’t always talking or spending time all together, but the necklace is a common thread between their experiences. The novel thus suggests that the individual can experience mystery and magic if they pay attention to the subtle events happening in their surroundings, as these small moments can offer a new way of seeing the world.