When the Wolf Comes Home

“That right there, my friend, is an invisibility blanket. Do you know what invisible means? It means, whenever you’re scared, if you hide under this blanket? The things you’re scared of can’t see you.”

This passage helps to define the nuances of the boy’s ability, which is triggered as a response to fear. Cassidy builds upon this speculative element by clarifying that the boy’s ability has less to do with fear than it does with belief. This is confirmed later on when the blanket works exactly as described by Margie in this passage.

“Your dad was a bad guy; I get it. And I definitely know what it’s like to build up your dad in your head. But…daddies are just people. Your daddy’s just a person.”

Although Jess has yet to realize the connection between Calvert’s transformation into the creature and the boy’s fear of him, this passage represents Jess’s first attempt to guide the boy using insight gleaned from her own experience. Jess tries to reassure the boy that his father is nothing more than another person—something she struggles to believe in her own feelings toward Tommy. In this way, the boy’s dynamic with Calvert mirrors Jess’s dynamic with Tommy, reinforcing the theme of navigating familial cycles of violence.

“Now that he’s dead, Cookie knows Jess must be feeling…a lot. Sad. Unsettled. Angry. Cookie can relate. She feels the same damn way about that worthless idiot—but he wasn’t her father. And the fact that Jess wants to isolate herself with those feelings, doesn’t want to share them with her mom (and best friend) is breaking Cookie’s heart and making her feel new levels of resentment for her least favorite ex-husband than she ever thought possible.

She doesn’t want to lose her daughter or their special relationship. That’s something she never even entertained before. Now, she’s tasting its possibility.”

This passage characterizes the dynamic between Jess and Cookie. Cookie’s empathy for Jess makes her the ideal supporting character for Jess. She understands exactly what Jess needs and feels at any given moment, even if it gets in the way of their relationship. Even if Cookie always puts Jess’s needs before her own, Cassidy is careful to portray the complex impact that this priority has on Cookie’s emotions.

“As is the place where the blood comes from: the tip of her finger, where she’s been pricked like Sleeping Beauty.

It wasn’t a spindle, though. It was a dirty hypodermic needle, which she still holds in her other hand. She tries to drop it, but it’s stuck to her palm by tiny, grasping legs all along its sides. Like some hideous insect.”

In this passage, Cassidy uses the allusion to fairy tales to drive the surreal nature of the situation that Jess finds herself in. Jess cannot believe that she is racing against time to get treatment for her illness, which creates narrative momentum and raises the stakes of her escape with the boy, as she must choose between protecting him or prioritizing herself.

“But now, Santos is the one smiling.

He is a detective.

And he’d been right about the existence of Department 925.

Now he’s going to prove them wrong about underestimating him.”

Santos has a clear character motive: While he does antagonize Jess, he isn’t acting out of ill will for her or the boy—he wants to surpass Allen’s expectations and prove himself an agent worth keeping. This leaves his character open to the possibility of siding with the protagonists.

“Look, sometimes adults have to lie a little, okay? Do you know the word complicated? Life is complicated. And sometimes you’ve gotta lie a little just to keep things from getting more complicated, that’s all. I’m really sorry I lied to you. I promise, I’ll always try to tell you the truth, okay?”

In this passage, Jess challenges the boy’s binary notions of good and evil. While this makes her less trustworthy in the boy’s eyes, Jess’s assurance that she will remain honest with him spurs him to continue trusting her. This passage thus represents a turning point in the boy’s relationship with Jess.

“She hopes he believes that. She can almost see the word complicated flash in his eyes. He trusts her, but he also doesn’t. Again, those warring, almost wordless impulses:

(leave him)

(you can’t do that)”

Jess is conscious of the risk she is taking in convincing the boy to trust her and must confront the struggle to be brave. Her promise to keep him safe as long as he stays with her clashes against her survival instincts, which urge Jess to abandon the boy. Jess’s continued commitment to staying with the boy despite the risks differentiates her from Tommy, who chose to abandon her.

“It makes him feel confused and jealous and alone. He adds it to the pile of feelings inside him. Complicated feelings.

So many things he’s never felt before. Some he recognizes as simply new flavors of Angry or Scared or Sad; others he can’t name any more than he could name all the different kinds of wind. They have their own temperatures, their own weights. They push him round and round in different directions before he even knows what’s happening.”

Cassidy shifts to the boy’s point of view to show how Jess’s explanation of complicated morality impacts his worldview. The novel shows him beginning to mature when he starts to describe his own feelings as “complicated.” This sets up his later epiphany that he is not inherently bad, driving Nature Versus Nurture as a theme.

“I trust you more than anybody, Jessa. To do what’s right for other people. But you’ve got a shit track record for doing what’s right for yourself.”

As an ally to Jess, Cookie can identify the character flaws that hinder Jess from developing as a character. Cookie suggests that Jess’s selflessness is sometimes rooted in the trauma of her father’s abandonment, as she seeks to ensure that others won’t abandon her by accommodating them. Jess’s struggle to deal with abandonment issues in a healthy way speaks to the theme of navigating familial cycles of violence.

“I had a friend, and he was a little boy like me. He lived in the walls. I made him come out and play with me when I was lonely, but Daddy…Daddy said I was bad and was going to get people hurt if I didn’t stop being bad […] so he had to hurt the little boy until the little boy wasn’t alive anymore, and he made me watch so I wouldn’t do anything like that anymore, but…but I don’t mean to be bad. And I don’t want to not be alive. So I get scared.”

This passage represents a key event in the boy’s backstory and speaks to the theme of nature versus nurture in the novel. The creation of the boy’s friend was an act of joy, meant to provide him with solace in isolation. Calvert’s violent retribution convinced the boy that his joy is morally bad, which extends to his fuller sense of self. This explains why the boy expresses remorse every time he uses his power; he associates it with the idea that he is inherently bad.

“But then…a blank space where his nickname should be.

[…]

Mickey.

It’s always been Mickey. Why couldn’t he remember that? And what is that weird tugging/plucking feeling? This time it almost felt like…fingers rooting around inside his skin.”

Apart from the itch that Santos experiences throughout his part of the narrative, there are other uncanny hints that foreshadow his fate in Chapter 45. This passage foreshadows his dissolution by hinting that something is erasing Santos from existence. The inevitability of Santos’s erasure underscores the terrifying power of the boy’s ability.

“Of all the horrific things the man has experienced lately, that moment was one of the worst. The way that shadow-boy had fought to live. The way his son had sobbed. There’d been no other way, the man was sure of that—there were lessons that had to be learned—but something in him had broken that day. Shrapnel, still tearing him up inside.

Why does he keep thinking about that now? A part of him wonders if maybe his son has been thinking of it, too. Maybe, there’s some sort of conduit between the two of them—father and son.”

Much like with Santos, Calvert, as the novel’s other antagonist, has complex feelings and motives. While he poses a threat to Jess and the boy, Calvert’s ability to acknowledge his son’s pain clashes with the fear he has around his son’s power. This makes his antagonism more complex, as he wrestles between his desire to stop the protagonists and his desire to reconcile with them. The comparison of his emotional pain to “shrapnel” reflects Calvert’s military background and the boy’s abilities as resulting from a military experiment gone wrong.

“[I]t’s like watching a nightmare through water. The entity ripples. Undulates. It’s a wolf. No, it has no snout, only a round head full of white, triangular teeth. No, it’s an amalgam of spiders crawling over themselves in the shape of a human.”

The unsettling transformation of the creature uses detailed imagery to underscore the intensity and magnitude of the boy’s fear. Calvert’s inability to control the form he takes whenever he transforms speaks to his inability to control the boy’s fear as a strict father. Instead, the boy’s fear grows, appearing more terrifying in its lack of a singular form.

“Consciously or unconsciously, to the boy, his father is eternal. For all Calvert knows, then, his corpse could become just as dangerous as his living body.

[…]

All he can do is focus on the Mission.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

One way or another, he’s going to find his boy and end this.”

This passage at the end of Part 2 insinuates Calvert’s sinister intentions toward the boy, invoking the theme of navigating familial cycles of violence. With the realization that it is impossible to stop himself from killing more people as the boy’s fears escalate, Calvert sets out to complete his “Mission.” The use of this word dehumanizes the boy and turns him into a target to neutralize.

“You wanna know the real reason I need it? […] Because improv is scary. Really, really scary. When I first started doing it, I was terrified. I would get this awful feeling. What if I can’t think of anything? What if my words don’t come out right? What if I’m not funny like everyone else? I’d feel it in my stomach, and I’d think, There’s no way I can go onstage and do anything. But then? I’d go onstage and do something. And the more I did it, the less scary it became. It helps remind me I can be brave.”

Improvisational comedy helps Jess learn that she is capable of engaging with fear and overcoming it. Though this explanation helps the boy understand that fear is manageable, it also stresses the idea that an active commitment to bravery is required to overcome fear. This drives the struggle to be brave as a theme.

“‘I know it, kiddo. I don’t like it either. And you know what? I’m still scared most of the time. I’m just like you.’

‘You are?’

‘Oh yeah. I’m always scared of stuff. You get to be a certain age and they stop calling it scared and start calling it anxiety. But it’s all the same. Sometimes I even get so scared I accidentally make the thing I’m scared of come true too.’”

This passage represents a turning point for Jess’s character in the struggle to be brave. Jess convinces the boy that they are the same, hoping to reassure him that it is normal to be anxious about the world around him. The passage also foreshadows the key revelation at the novel’s end: The boy accepts this act of empathy so much that it inadvertently gives Jess the same power that the boy has, allowing her to manipulate reality with her emotions.

“So maybe the key, then, is to just lean into it. Make him feel less alone. Less special. Literally less afraid of the fear itself.

Maybe she can get him to think his abilities are just a normal quirk he’ll grow out of. No, not think—believe.

Is that possible?

It’ll take time and care…but, if she’s right, it’ll also only take one simple moment of belief for him to fix himself.”

In this passage, Jess stops seeing the boy’s ability as a hindrance to their situation. Instead, she radically shifts her perspective to frame the boy’s ability as a natural part of himself, hoping to impart the same perspective to him. This offers resolution to nature versus nurture as a theme by suggesting that the boy has agency and can choose who he will become and how he will use his powers.

“It’s like I’m suddenly two people. At least two. You ever felt that way? There’s the me who’s running, and then the me who’s inside, watching it all and wondering what the fuck are you doing, man?”

This passage, taken from Tommy’s letter, echoes the description of Inner Jess and Outer Jess in Chapter 2. The mirroring suggests that Jess and Tommy are similar in combating severe inner fears and self-doubt. Crucially, however, Jess will choose bravery over fear in the struggle to be brave, allowing her to differentiate herself from her father.

“How do you protect. A fragment he never got around to completing. Or maybe just a concept he never wrapped his mind around.

[…]

‘I just wanted a dad, asshole,’ she tells the burning sheets.”

Jess expresses her complicated wish for Tommy to have been around, even if he posed a threat to her life, as evidenced by past incidents. This suggests that Jess believed in Tommy’s capacity to become a better person without running away from her, speaking to her belief in the power of nurture and change in the nature-versus-nurture debate. To avoid his mistake, she must grow without abandoning the boy.

“This conjuring forth of ideas from his head, but at last, in a controlled, satisfying way! It’s bliss. It brings him back to that feeling he got, staring at those first images in his picture book, the ones that captured his imagination: the idea of there being a world of possibility at his fingertips—not to fear but to explore.”

This passage drives hope for the boy, as it shows him using emotions other than fear to trigger his ability, invoking the theme of nature versus nurture. This underscores Jess’s hope that the boy could see his power as a natural part of himself, rather than as an extraneous feature that hinders him and makes him inherently “bad.”

“Right now, he’s five, Jess; he’s afraid of five-year-old things. What happens when he gets older? […] Jess, what happens when he discovers cruelty?”

Santos appeals to Jess by arguing that the boy’s power could become impossible to control once he enters adolescence and finds it difficult to navigate his feelings. His argument drives nature versus nurture as a theme because he preemptively views the boy’s feelings as being negative before the boy can demonstrate an ability to manage those emotions.

“Silly Jess; she’d thought that by never getting married and never having children, she could avoid a conversation like this. Like the one Cookie had with Little Jess when it was time to explain that Daddy didn’t want to be around her anymore.

The boy doesn’t throw up like she did, but he wears an expression of disbelief and hurt and confusion Jess is sure is identical to her younger self’s. It rips her heart into pieces.”

Jess changes her mind around Santos when she realizes that she is putting the boy in the exact same situation that Cookie and Tommy put her in when she was young. Her trust in Santos is superseded by her intent to stop the past from repeating itself, reflecting her experiences navigating familial cycles of violence.

“‘It’s too hard. And I’m too bad.’

‘It is hard,’ she agrees. ‘But you know what? I think you can do hard things. I think you can do anything.’”

Jess regains the boy’s trust by affirming her belief in his capacity to transcend the bad things he has done, speaking once again to nature versus nurture. This resonates with Tommy’s failed capacity to be a better father and in her belief that she can be better than Tommy ever was. By extending that belief to the boy, she overcomes his self-perception that he is inherently bad.