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Chapter 13. Catching: The Grey
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Catching Teller Crow, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Grief
Abuse of Power, Racism, and the Law
Storytelling and Truth
Time
Female Friendship
Summary
Analysis
After hearing Catching’s story, Beth and Michael are furious. Michael tells Catching that he can protect her and her friend (Crow) from anyone who has hurt them. Catching, with a hard expression, says it’s “too late” to help her and that her friend is no longer “in trouble.” Michael gives Catching his card and asks whether she wants to say anything else; when she stays silent and closes her eyes, he leaves the room with a promise to come visit again the next day.
Catching’s claim that it’s “too late” to help her is ambiguous: it may mean that the trauma she’s suffered is irreversible—or that she succeeded in overcoming it before Michael arrived. Similarly, her claim that Crow is no longer “in trouble” could mean that Crow is irretrievably dead or that she’s escaped the Feed. In either case, Beth and Michael’s distress at Catching’s story reveals that while they may not believe in the fantastical details, they interpreted the Feed’s assault as an allegory for a real, horrible attack on Catching.
Themes
Once Michael has left, Catching opens her eyes again. Beth, feeling powerless, offers to help Catching herself—and Catching retorts that Beth should help herself and realize that she and her dad can’t return to the past. Beth wants to contradict Catching, but she knows she can’t: her death has made her and her dad permanently “different.” Catching looks at Beth’s face, smiles a little, and tells her to leave for now.
Catching keeps urging Beth to do what’s best for herself, showing that she is a true friend to Beth. Beth’s realization that her death made her and her dad “different” suggests that Beth can’t stay frozen as she was when she died.
Themes
Beth finds Michael on his phone in the parking lot. When he hangs up, he explains that he’s trying to get information about Catching’s rehab facility. He’s sure that someone did something terrible to Catching, but he’s not sure he can figure out more unless she tells him more. Beth doubts Catching will: she now believes that Catching does just want to be “heard”—because Catching thinks she can take care of herself.
Michael still believes that his first attempt at decoding Catching’s fantastical allegory was correct; as such, he assumes that the tunnels represent rehab. Despite his hasty assumptions, Michael does acknowledge that there are limits to what he can figure out without hard information. Beth, meanwhile, is arriving at her own interpretation of Catching: she has decided that Catching wants to be “heard” but not helped because she knows she can help herself, not because she’s beyond help. This interpretation suggests that trauma has not psychologically paralyzed Catching the way grief has paralyzed Michael.
Themes
Aunty Viv calls Michael. When he doesn’t pick up, Beth tells him he’ll have to talk to Aunty Viv at Grandpa Jim’s upcoming 82nd birthday party anyway. Michael says he won’t attend, and when Beth insists that he should, he snaps at her. Afterward, he apologizes for his tone and opens the car door for her—which she doesn’t need, since as a ghost she can pass through solid objects. Beth realizes that the day before, she would have cared more about not upsetting her father than pressing him on the birthday—but things have changed. Instead of getting into the car, she runs away, straight through the hospital and into the streets on the other side.
Michael is still treating Beth as if she’s alive, opening the car door for her as if she has a physical body. Perhaps due to Catching’s tough but friendly encouragement, Beth is no longer willing to play along with Michael as he pretends that nothing has changed for Beth since the day she died. Beth’s decision to leave rather than let her dad continue to pretend things are normal suggests that she has realized that she can’t solve her dad’s unhealthy grief simply by trying to avoid upsetting him.
Themes
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Walking aimlessly, Beth thinks how awful it is that Michael would skip the party for Grandpa Jim, who loved Beth intensely and treated Michael like his own child. Besides, this will be the first family birthday party since Beth’s death—and if her father no-shows, he’ll hurt the entire family. Beth wonders whether, rather than helping her father return to his pre-grief self, she should have been helping him learn “how to live in a world” where his daughter had died.
Here Beth is realizing that she cannot freeze or reverse time for her father. Now that she’s died, things are never going to be the same for them. Teaching him “how to live in a world” where she’s dead is thus framed as a healthier way to address his grief than pretending nothing has changed.
Themes
Suddenly, Beth realizes that a large shadow is hovering ominously over her. She runs out from under the shadow, but it chases her. For a moment, she thinks it’s going to catch her—but then she realizes that, without a material body, she can run as fast as she wants. She puts on a burst of speed that fills her with pleasure and a sense of being “alive.” Abruptly, the shadow vanishes, and a “sea of colours” appears ahead of Beth.
Beth feels “alive” and happy when she acknowledges that she has died and uses her lack of physical body to her own benefit. This paradoxical reaction hints that Beth as well as Michael will be happier when she fully accepts the fact of her own death. The sudden appearance of a “sea of colours” in this moment emphasizes that accepting her death is good for Beth, since intense colors in the novel represent positive emotions and psychological health.
Themes
The colors exert an enormous emotional pull on Beth, and they’re singing a song “like a mother might sing to her child.” Beth realizes that her mom is waiting for her on the “other side”—but also, her mother has been speaking to Beth her whole life, in a positive and resilient voice that Beth believed was internal. In an instant, Beth understands that she can still have a relationship with her living family even if she moves on—all of them except Michael, who can’t handle Beth as a dead girl, only as an entity as like her living self as possible. With great difficulty, Beth turns away from the colors—and they disappear.
Catching silently recites her female forebears’ names to draw on their strength. Similarly, in this scene, Beth realizes that she has been drawing on her deceased mother for resilience her whole life. Since the novel uses intense colors to symbolize emotional health, the bright colors of the “other side” suggest that deceased loved ones can be part of the loving community that helps people heal from grief and trauma. Unfortunately, Beth recognizes that Michael isn’t yet ready for the growth and change that accepting her passage to the afterlife would require—so she gives up a happy, emotionally positive afterlife to continue haunting Michael.
Themes
Beth cries until night falls. The shadow doesn’t return, and Beth speculates that it was a representation of her own death, trying to get her to move on. Miserably, she trudges back to the hotel, where she finds Michael staring at a note-covered wall with big labels reading Catching, Sarah Blue, and “The Home.” Beth, surprised, comments that Michael has made “one of [his] thinking walls.” Michael sees she’s been crying and apologizes for speaking angrily to her before. Beth doesn’t want to explain everything that happened with the colors, so she just accepts his apology.
Beth’s surprise that Michael has made “one of [his] thinking walls” suggests that he used to make such walls before Beth’s death but has been too wrapped up in grief to make another one—until now. His decision to assemble a thinking wall at this point implies that his desire to help Catching and get justice for Sarah Blue have partially overridden his paralyzing grief. It isn’t clear why Beth doesn’t want to tell Michael about the colors; perhaps, now that she’s sure the afterlife would be wonderful, she doesn’t want to make him feel guilty by explaining that she gave it up for him.
Themes
Beth asks whether Michael believes that the cases are connected. Michael says he isn’t sure, but he needs to determine whether anyone has seen Alexander Sholt since the fire. Beth asks whether Michael thinks Alexander is the unidentified body—and, if so, why Charles Sholt would have lied about seeing him. Michael speculates that perhaps Charles is trying to stall the investigation while Derek destroys evidence of Alexander’s crimes. Beth asks whether Michael thinks Derek is the murderer. Michael says no—Derek seemed too surprised by the discovery of the bodies. Beth realizes that until recently, she would have been happy to see her dad so involved in a case, but now she wants him truly reconnected with life, so she can move on.
This scene constitutes a major turning point for Beth. Rather than repressing her desires to move on to the afterlife, she is acknowledging to herself that moving on is what she wants—and that only her feelings of responsibility toward her grief-stricken dad are preventing her from doing so. Nevertheless, Beth is still unwilling to leave Michael: she wants him to have grown as a person and recovered from her death before she leaves him.
Themes
