My Life with the Walter Boys

The loss of Jackie’s family in a car accident, which occurs prior to the start of the narrative, shapes her character arc throughout the novel. As she strives to protect herself from her own overwhelming emotions, the novel argues that healing cannot occur, or even begin, without acknowledging grief. Through the events of the text, Jackie learns how to confront her grief so that she might begin the lifelong road of healing.

Jackie struggles to address her grief at the beginning of the text, believing that experiencing her grief makes her weak: “For the first month after the accident, I never left my bed […] Since then, I’d promised myself I would be strong and composed. I didn’t want to go back to the weak, hollow person I’d become” (5). Rather than acknowledging her grief as a crucial step in the healing process, Jackie rejects her grief and forges ahead, throwing herself into her schoolwork and planning for her future.

She uses the metaphor of a wall to describe her efforts to protect herself from strong emotion: “[A]fter my breakdown, I taught myself how to control my feelings. It was vital to my future success because I could never lose myself like that again.