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Chapter 16. Beth: The Story
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
Catching knows that people can escape the present by contemplating the future or the past, but at times the present is too horrible to ignore. First and Second carry her to the Feed’s room and put her on the table. She notices that something about the Feed looks different, but she isn’t sure what. The Feed has to dig deep in her body to find a color to eat, because so many have been eaten already. Catching passes out from the pain. When she regains consciousness, she’s in her own room and her entire arm has turned gray.
When Catching thinks about traveling mentally away from the present to the future or the past, she emphasizes that a person’s subjective, personal sense of time is sometimes more powerful than clock-time. Yet when she is suffering another one of the Feed’s assaults, she can’t escape in that way. Her progressive loss of color symbolizes how the Feed’s violent predation is stealing all her positive emotions and undermining her psychological strength.
Themes
Crow asks Catching why she struggles rather than becoming a dead girl. Catching considers whether emotional death would be a release, but she rejects the possibility. Instead, she recites the words describing Catching women, from “Granny” to “Mum” to herself. Crow joins in and adds her own relationship words, including her grandmother, parents, friend, and Catching herself. Eventually, Catching falls asleep. When she wakes, the Fetchers bring her food. After eating, she realizes they’ve drugged her again. She’s shocked: they never bring her to the Feed again so quickly. Then she realizes that the Feed who just assaulted her had eyes like “chips of brown stone,” not “mirrors”—which means there are two Feeds.
Catching refuses to become emotionally dead as a response to the Feed’s predation. Her focus on reciting her relationship-words emphasizes that loving relationships can be a source of strength in traumatic situations. When Crow riffs on Catching’s relationship names, adding her own, it shows that Catching’s friendship is changing Crow, making her want to emulate Catching’s loving strength. Finally, Catching’s discovery that there are two Feeds reveals that her story has two villains, not one.
Themes
