Tilt

The caterpillar toy that Annie picks up from the rubble at IKEA represents comfort, maternal love, and transformation. Annie first discovers the toy when she trips during the chaos following the earthquake and reaches out her hand to stabilize herself, which “closes on something soft. […] A green caterpillar that you pull apart to make music. A baby toy” (28). The toy’s tactile comfort draws her to it, and the fact that it is a baby toy also symbolizes her hope that she might be able to give it to Bean in the future if she and Bean survive the crisis.

As the novel progresses, the caterpillar toy becomes Annie’s emotional anchor amid the chaos. When she is physically hurting and mentally frazzled, she soothes herself by closing her eyes and rubbing her thumb against the toy’s soft fabric. This helps her dissociate from her surroundings and her pain, and she says that “the whole world [becomes] soft black velvet” (104). She also sees the toy as a companion in her lonely search for Dom. She anthropomorphizes the caterpillar and describes it as having “sad, beady eyes” (82), which reflects her own anxiety.