47 pages • 1-hour read
When Crickets Cry: a Novel of the Heart
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Themes
Redemption
When Crickets Cry, at its essence, is a story of redemption. Reese rejects his identity as a heart surgeon after committing what he views as an unforgiveable sin. After taking stimulants to perform multiple heart surgeries, he falls into a deep sleep on the night his wife dies. She cannot rouse him, and despite his attempts to save her when he finally wakes, the delay in treatment results in her death.
When Reese meets Annie, he recognizes that she, a young heart patient much like his wife, represents a chance for redemption, and he begins gravitating toward his old identity. He struggles to embrace the opportunity, however, when he feels guilt over his attraction to Annie’s Aunt Cindy. Because of his failures, Reese feels he does not deserve love.
Instead of helping Annie in the most important way he can—by assisting with her medical care—he helps only in small ways at first. The favors gradually increase in importance until finally, at the climax of the book, Reese performs Annie’s heart transplant. He does so after confessing, to Charlie, his guilt about the stimulants, Emma’s death, and Charlie’s blindness. Charlie’s forgiveness helps Reese see that saving Emma was not his life’s purpose; his true purpose lies in his gifts as a surgeon, which Reese sees as coming from God.
Reese isn’t the only character who travels a redemptive path. Minor characters Termite and Davis “Monk” Stipes also highlight the archetypal Christian narrative of sin and the redemptive power of God’s grace. Characters such as Emma and Annie, who remain positive even through suffering, represent Christian ideals that inspire people like Reese, who are mired in guilt and sadness, to find hope in God.
How Humans Relate to the Body
As an aspiring surgeon, as a medical student, and as one of the world’s preeminent heart specialists, Reese spends his entire life learning about and interacting with the human body. His relationship to the physical body is complicated: He has a technical fascination with how it works, viewing the body as a machine. At the same time, as he comes of age, he learns to see Emma’s body as more than a broken thing that he has to fix. He learns to love and appreciate her body as much as he loves her spirit and her essence.
Through his work, Reese comes to appreciate the human body’s resilience: Even though people abuse their bodies through activities like smoking and excessive drinking, the body often persists, living well into old age. He recoils at pornographic imagery and at library patrons who misuse textbooks to ogle the female body, viewing those activities as additional forms of abuse, in particular, toward women. His own physical attraction to Emma’s body is more romantic and often described with innocence; for example, he describes his first kiss with Emma as unlike the way he kisses his mom before leaving for school—as though the difference surprises him.
As a trained surgeon, Reese can look at a body, measure its vitals, and note its condition on sight. When he meets Annie, he notes the scar on her chest and sees that she has the symptoms of an enlarged heart. His intensifying quest to fix Annie’s body draws him nearer to her Aunt Cindy, whose body is an object of attraction rather than a machine he needs to repair. In the end, he falls in love someone whose body doesn’t require repair, separating his sense of purpose as a surgeon from his yearning for physical intimacy.
Hope and Miracles
Miracles, and the feeling of hope that accompanies them, are constant themes in the Christian faith; miracles happen throughout the novel on both a small and grand scale. Reese considers the heart itself to be miraculous: “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart” (124). He notes how God designed the heart as the “wellspring of life” (114), a mystery he views as unexplainable, and he sees the heart as the center of life and hope.
The story’s serendipitous plot—a young girl in need of a heart transplant meets a secret, world-renowned heart surgeon in the street by chance—sets up a miraculous series of events that, from the characters’ perspectives, are miracles from God. At the climax of the novel, Annie’s heart begins beating again, even though she appears to have died during the operation. Reese has power over the technical aspects of surgery, but he has no answers for how to restart Annie’s heart:
No matter how much I studied, how much I prepared, or how good a doctor folks say I am, the difficult part is know that, in truth, I am powerless to get it going again. It is […] a miracle […] that I do not understand (332).
Another miracle occurs when Annie’s donated heart begins beating only after Reese speaks a Bible verse aloud. Reese views himself as powerless to make the heart beat again, assuming that part is up to God. He believes the heart has “been waiting for me to simply speak the words, and remind it […] for reasons I cannot and never will explain […] as if it had never stopped, it beat” (333).
An additional miracle, which occurs at the end of the novel, happens when Annie tells Reese that she saw Emma “walking along the lake” (328). Emma handed her a sailboat, and the sail was crafted from a letter that Emma had written to Reese. After Annie shares her dream, Charlie gives Reese one last letter from Emma—a letter that she had made Charlie promise not to give him until the timing was right. The letter encourages Reese to move forward with his life and find love again. Reese views the letter as a miraculous gift that enables him to let go of his regret.
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