Wish

“I studied the inky little stars and hearts I had drawn on my arm that morning.”

Stars become an important motif in the narrative as Charlie’s fixation on wishing permeates the story. Stars also become part of a collective ritual to conclude each day as she sits on the porch every night with Gus and Bertha, and they all look up at the stars. Children often draw on themselves out of boredom in class or as a way of self-expression, but Charlie’s impromptu body art also serves as a reminder of wishing on stars, an especially comforting concept to her, given her fondness for wishing in general.

“Every once in a while, the view out the window changed from woods, thick with pine trees and ferns and moss-covered rocks, to a wide-open view of the mountains stretching on forever in the distance. A smoky haze hovered over them, soft gray against the deep blue of the mountains.”

O’Connor incorporates detailed descriptions of the landscape throughout the narrative to highlight the beauty of the Smoky Mountains and to illustrate Charlie’s growing connection to this new place. Despite initially hating the move to Colby, Charlie is enchanted by the beauty of the mountains from the beginning. Long before she falls in love with the people of Colby, she develops an attachment to the rural landscape and the peace it brings her.

“A neat row of daffodils lined up like soldiers along the edge of the chicken-wire fence that surrounded the garden.”

In this quote, O’Connor uses figurative language to describe the line of flowers and to highlight the beauty and orderliness of the garden. At first, Charlie just enjoys looking at Bertha and Gus’s garden, but later she enjoys working in the garden herself and appreciates the food it produces.

“[…] since I wasn’t going to be there much longer.”

Charlie repeats this phrase throughout much of the first half of the story. The phrase represents her trauma and her desire to return to her family in Raleigh. However, each time she says it, she knows inside that it’s probably not true. O’Connor displays the effects of displacement on a young child through Charlie’s internal struggle to accept the truth.

“She says if you share ’em with somebody, they get smaller.”

Howard becomes Charlie’s friend and becomes a source of wisdom for her in many situations. He encourages her to share her problems with him since his mother once told him it helps relieve the burden. Though Charlie tries to bottle her grief and pain, Howard becomes a safe place for her to be vulnerable, and she shares her full story with him.

“But none of those could hold a candle to my trouble, weighing down that clothesline like a sack full of bricks.”

Howard uses a metaphor to explain how everyone has problems and if each person hung their problem on the clothesline, they would see that their problems are small compared to others. The metaphor doesn’t work for Charlie because she feels like her problems are bigger than everyone else’s. She repeatedly describes how her situation sits on her like a heavy burden.

“Loses her way? I’d be happy to draw her a map to show her the way back to being my mama again.”

Bertha uses a figure of speech as a euphemism to politely describe Carla’s problems to Charlie. Instead of saying that Carla is selfish or that she makes poor decisions, Bertha simply says that she “loses her way.” As most children do, Charlie takes the phrase literally and wonders how a mother could lose her way to finding her children.

“I wished I could’ve saved that moment […] Just pack it into one of Bertha’s canning jars to keep in my room. Then when I was feeling bad about myself or loaded down with all my troubles, I could open it up and breathe in the goodness of it and I’d feel better.”

Bertha’s canning jars become an important motif in the narrative. Charlie uses the image of preserving food to highlight the value of Bertha’s kind words. Having never been encouraged verbally by her parents, Charlie wants to store up Mrs. Odom’s affirmations so that she can have them on hand as an antidote whenever she experiences doubt or anxiety.

“[T]hat didn’t sound nearly as bad as county jail. I think folks in the county jail have to stay for a long time. But if Scrappy was just getting corrected, maybe that wouldn’t take too long.”

When Charlie hears her father’s jail called a “correctional facility,” she latches on to the phrase, hoping it means that her father is not a hardened criminal but that he will emerge a changed person. Charlie longs to believe the best of her parents despite how their poor choices have negatively affected her life.

“I loved the earthy, mossy smell of the air and the soft tickle of the ferns that bowed down along the edges of the path.”

The outdoors becomes a place of peace and rest for Charlie. She remains hopeful that she can return to the big city of Raleigh, but she can’t deny that Colby’s pastoral beauty hasn’t been a balm to her weary soul. O’Connor uses sensory imagery to convey the beauty of the natural world and its calming effect on a broken, anxious child.

“I didn’t know one other kid in the whole world who would use the word forlorn.”

“Forlorn” means a feeling of loneliness and profound sadness. Howard’s choice of words is an apt description of Charlie and is an example of how well he knows her. It also exemplifies his unique character in that he doesn’t act or speak like other kids his age.

“Jackie’s voice floated through the telephone line, soft and sure. From Raleigh to Colby. I pictured that voice traveling from Carol Lee’s fancy brick house along highways and over treetops, and then up the winding roads and down the gravel driveway into this little house.”

Charlie is desperate to reconnect to her family in Raleigh, and her regular phone calls with Jackie become a reference point and lifeline for Charlie as she tries to make sense of her fractured family. O’Connor uses personification to describe Jackie’s voice as a living thing in and of itself, making it come alive as it travels through the phone lines and into Charlie’s heart.

“The Blue Ridge Parkway is up yonder.”

The Blue Ridge Parkway is over four hundred miles of picturesque driving through North Carolina’s Shenandoah Valley and features stunning views of the Smoky Mountain Range. With the phrase “up yonder,” O’Connor deliberately incorporates the Appalachian dialect into Bertha’s speech, which is representative of the geographic location. “Up yonder” is a directional term meaning “over there.”

“[T]he house was filled with all kinds of good smells and the countertops were covered with bowls of black-eyed peas and turnip greens. Squash casseroles and sliced tomatoes. Fried okra and succotash. Biscuits and gravy. Brownies and peach cobbler.”

Food becomes an important motif in the narrative. Bertha uses her cooking skills to not only provide sustenance for Charlie but also to make her feel more at home. In this passage, O’Connor incorporates an extended list of food to create a sensory experience for the reader. The food is also representative of the geographic area and Bertha’s hospitality.

“I closed my eyes, and in my mind, I became Audrey. A girl with perfect sneakers and a friend to whisper secrets to and a mama who wrote ‘I love you very much’ on a note for me.”

This moment represents a low point emotionally for the protagonist. In the beginning, Charlie despises Audrey’s snobbery and fights back against her condescension. However, Charlie’s self-esteem plummets and she moves from disdaining Audrey to idolizing her because of Audrey’s much stabler home life. More than Audrey’s fancy clothes or perfect hair, Charlie longs to have Audrey’s loving family.

“I had a perfect picture in my mind of little Carla snipping those buttons. Snip, snip, snip.”

O’Connor uses onomatopoeia to describe the sound of Charlie’s mother cutting the buttons off Bertha’s blouse. On a deeper level, by sharing the memory, Bertha gives Charlie a picture of her mother as a child and reveals that Carla always struggled with strange behavior. The revealed memories give Charlie context and demystify her mother’s past, helping her to understand her mother’s broken relationship with Bertha.

“Suddenly my confidence began to spin out of control. Faster and faster until it rose right up through the ceiling and out the roof of Rocky Creek Baptist Church, disappearing into the sky and leaving me there in the fellowship hall with a stomachache.”

Charlie’s anxiety grows as she attempts to cover the truth about her life but feels like she is losing control of the narrative. O’Connor uses figurative language to express Charlie’s anxious feelings and how those feelings can overtake a person and make them feel helplessly out of control.

“So the three of us pulled weeds and picked beans and pinched dead flowers off the marigolds.”

This scene displays Charlie, Bertha, and Gus as a real family working together in the garden. Their pruning and weeding symbolize a new start as they pluck out the choking weeds and dead flowers to make room for new growth. The garden becomes a place where they can connect.

“I sat there on that porch with confusion swirling around me like a swarm of bees.”

Charlie, having spent most of her time in Colby plotting how she will leave, now feels conflicted when she discovers she can return to Raleigh. O’Connor uses a simile to compare Charlie’s confusion to a horde of stinging insects. She uses figurative language to give the reader a visceral sense of Charlie’s intense emotional state. 

“The thing about Howard was, you could be with him and talk or you could be with him and not talk. He liked you either way.”

When Charlie first meets Howard, his personality annoys her, and she pushes him away. Now, as she experiences profound distress and anxiety over possibly having to leave Colby, Charlie appreciates Howard’s ability to just sit in the tension with her without offering advice. This moment displays the evolution of Charlie’s relationship with Howard and how she now appreciates his unique personality.

“I just hadn’t seen all those things until now. I’d been so busy making my wish that I hadn’t seen things the way they really were.”

This moment represents Charlie’s epiphany. She realizes that Jackie was right and that Colby offers her a safe place to live and thrive. Blinded by her desire to repair her family, Charlie spent so much time wishing for another life that she missed the truth in front of her. She now understands that her home is in Colby with Bertha and Gus.

“She repeated some of those social services kind of words like reevaluate and stable environment.”

O’Connor incorporates language used in foster care to give a realistic portrayal of what it is like to be a displaced child. To Charlie, the words sound clinical and detached as she experiences a longing for a loving home and compassionate parents. The social services worker is just checking boxes, but to Charlie, those boxes cannot encapsulate the essence of her life.

“[M]y heart felt light as a feather as I turned up the gravel driveway towards Gus and Bertha’s.”

For most of the story, Charlie describes herself as being weighed down by her grief and her inability to fix her family. Once she learns she can remain in Colby, the weight is lifted. O’Connor uses figurative language to describe the change that occurs in her emotional state.