Posted

Throughout Posted, John David Anderson explores the permanency of words and their potential effects on people. Different words mean different things to different people, and words may be assigned meanings they don’t inherently carry. With sticky notes, bullying, and character reactions being core components, the book showcases the power of words.

Sticky notes are used to deliver all sorts of messages, from harmless to hurtful to thought-provoking, and everything in between. While the harmless messages (i.e., notes about celebrities) have little impact on anyone, the hurtful and thought-provoking messages carry more weight. Rose receives two threatening sticky notes. Though the notes fail to elicit a reaction, they may still bother her on some level not privy to the eye; they distress Wolf, who feels hurt on Rose’s behalf. For Mr. Sword’s assignment in Chapter 10, Wolf writes that “words are ghosts that can haunt us forever” (163), which gets to the crux of how words hurt. Words are the spirit (ghosts) of how a person feels, and like ghosts, words can follow others, haunting and hurting them long after they’re seen or spoken. One of the group’s bullies feels threatened by Wolf’s message, showing how it carries two different meanings. To Wolf, it is a simple truth about his own ghosts.