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Chapter 21. Beth: The End
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
Beth turns and sees Catching, wearing a robelike version of her green sweater and carrying a crow—which Beth now realizes is Sarah Blue—on her shoulder. Startled by Catching’s sudden apparition, Beth asks whether Catching is a ghost. Catching responds evasively—and Beth, noticing this, starts trying to figure out what really happened to Catching. When Catching asks whether Beth understands the purpose of the story now, Beth thinks that even Catching may not know “everything she’d been trying to say.” Nevertheless, Beth admits that she understands Catching was trying to model for her “how to move on.”
Beth’s realization that the crow is Sarah Blue suggests both that Crow from Catching’s story was Sarah Blue’s ghost and that the crow Beth saw at the children’s home when the story began may have been Crow herself. Catching’s claim that she told her story to help Beth “move on” emphasizes both the friendship between the two girls and the necessity of relationships to overcoming grief or trauma. Meanwhile, Beth’s suspicion that Catching isn’t aware of “everything she’d been trying to say” suggests that some stories can’t be reduced to a single message or purpose.
Themes
Catching explains that Crow saw Beth at the home the day she arrived in town. As Crow thought that Beth might be trapped in this world, Catching decided to meet her and discover the truth. Beth says she remembers the crow. When Crow flies from Catching’s shoulder to a nearby tree, Michael smiles, clearly happy that Sarah’s spirit is free. He promises Catching that the police will hold Gerry Bell, Charles Sholt, and any other accomplices to account—but Catching needs to leave it to the police.
Since the crow Beth first saw really was Crow, it seems likely that Beth’s wave really did cause the crow to fly away. In other words, the novel has all along been a detective story where everything is connected, not a scientific story where correlation cannot be assumed to prove causation. When Michael promises to pursue Derek and Alexander’s accomplices, he is asking Catching to trust the legal system despite a police officer, Derek, having violently abused her—and when he asks her to leave it to the police, he is implicitly telling a hypothetical story in which Catching murdered Alexander, Derek, Cavanagh, and Flint.
Themes
Beth and Catching exchange glances. Then Beth explains to Michael that Catching didn’t commit the murders. Alexander’s window broke when something pulled Cavanagh and Flint out of it—and then dropped them onto the drain from the sky, without touching the fence. Something got into Derek’s house through the chimney. And the “blade with the curve” that stabbed all of them was a beak. Utterly startled, Michael stares at Crow. Then he apologizes to Crow for everything that happened to her and asks her to let him, Allie, and the police handle the case now that the Feeds and Fetchers are gone.
Beth tells a better story about the murders than Michael did, because she takes into account more of the strange evidence (e.g. the “blade with the curve,” the locked gate and door) at the murder scenes and thus spins a hypothetical narrative more likely to be close to the truth. Michael quickly sees the superiority of Beth’s story; as a result, he moves to begging Crow to trust the law enforcement system, despite the way that police officers Gerry and Derek Bell harmed her in the past.
Themes
Beth wonders how she didn’t notice that one of the town’s crows was larger and prettier than the others. She connects Crow to the timely appearances of wind at various points in the investigation. Thinking about Crow’s powers leads Beth to think about Catching’s—and she has a realization. She says that Catching isn’t dead: her power nurtures her friends, helping Crow affect the world and giving Beth the ability to make lightbulbs explode, because each Catching woman has a power, and Catching’s is to “walk all the sides of the world.”
Beth, extrapolating further from strange occurrences throughout the novel, posits that Crow was nearby, helping Catching, Beth, Michael, and Allie all along. Moreover, she realizes that Catching’s power to “walk all sides of the world” serves to strengthen Catching’s ghost friends, Beth and Crow. This element of Catching’s supernatural ability represents the ability of female friends to support and empower one another.
Themes
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When Beth demands to know how Catching’s power works, Catching shrugs and asks how Beth once almost crossed to “another side” full of colors. Beth realizes that Catching knows about that incident because Crow—who was the shadow chasing Beth—told her. Beth tells Catching that her almost-journey is different because she’s a ghost, “not properly anywhere.” Catching, blasé, says that she’s “properly everywhere. It’s all the same world.” Catching announces that she and Crow are going to travel to the side of reality full of colors, as Catching wants to visit her mother there. She invites Beth to come.
Catching’s claim that “it’s all the same world” suggests a metaphysical or religious view according to which living people and dead people inhabit the same reality: they just exist in different parts of reality, affecting reality in different ways. This view implies that grief is more about living people’s fear of losing access to their dead loved ones than it is about their dead loved one’s ceasing to exist. The afterlife full of colors, which symbolize positive emotions and psychological health, suggests that the dead’s existence is joyous.
Themes
Beth’s first instinct is to say that she has to stay with Michael—but, recognizing that things have changed, she instead says she has to speak with him. Beth waits while Michael makes phone calls to the city. When he finishes, they walk into the trees to talk. He asks whether she’s going to the other side, and she admits that she’s planning to travel to the colorful place with Catching and Crow. He acknowledges that she’s worried about him, criticizes himself for how he behaved after her death, and says that he wants to be a father she “can be proud of,” even if she’s gone.
Here, Michael acknowledges that the way he grieved Beth was unhealthy not only for himself but for her. That Michael’s grief was unhealthy for Beth is clear in that it discouraged her from traveling to an afterlife full of colors, which symbolize positive emotion and psychological health. When Michael says that he wants her to “be proud of” him in the afterlife, meanwhile, he's acknowledging that they can have a loving relationship even if they aren’t physically present to each other anymore.
Themes
Beth uses her intense emotions and Catching’s presence to manifest in the living world—so that she can hug Michael. After they hug, they say that they love each other and reaffirm their father-daughter relationship. Then Michael calls Aunty Viv and says that he’s coming to Grandpa Jim’s birthday party, which Beth knows is his way of “choosing the opposite of grey.”
Catching’s power allows Beth to hug Michael—a detail that represents how Catching’s friendship and encouragement helped Beth forge a healthier relationship with her father. When Beth says that Michael is “choosing the opposite of grey” by reconnecting with his in-laws, she suggests that Michael is beginning to combat his grief with loving relationships the way Catching fought her “gray” trauma with positive emotions.
Themes
After Michael has walked away through the trees, Crow—in the form of a human girl—and Catching approach Beth. Crow asks whether Beth is ready. When Beth says that she is, Crow takes Beth and Catching’s hands and tells them to run. The colorful girls—Beth in yellow, Catching in green, and Crow in black—run until they leap into the air, transforming into colors and joining the other colors waiting for them, including Beth’s mom, Catching’s mom, and Crow’s family. The three girls travel together everywhere.
The girls transform into streaks of intense color after finally overcoming their “gray” grief and trauma, emphasizing that people can heal from such negative experiences with the help of friends and loved ones. Up to this point, Beth has been trapped looking exactly as she did the day she died. Her transformation into a streak of color highlights that she has overcome her own and Michael’s grief and accepted the growth and change that comes with death. Finally, the girls’ decision to travel together everywhere shows the strength and importance of female friendship.
Themes
