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Chapter 3. Beth: The Witness
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 stands on a “rocky hill” with her mom, whose hair is dyed “redder” than the sunset. When her mom asks how Catching is, Catching says she’s cold—the long sweater that her mother knitted for her isn’t well-made. Catching’s mom gives her a jacket and asks whether she’s feeling more at peace. Catching is: she prefers this place to home, where people have been unjust to her and made her furious. On their trip, Catching’s mom has taught her to silently recite her female ancestors’ names, from her great-great-grandmother to herself, as a way of controlling her anger. Catching has also learned the stories of her female ancestors’ strengths and tribulations. Her mom tells Catching that she has inherited “all the strengths of the Catching women.”
At the novel’s beginning, Beth and Michael were walking up a hill dotted with rocks; it is possible this remembered scene takes place on the same “rocky hill” overlooking town. In the novel, intense colors symbolize positive emotions. Catching’s mom’s brightly dyed hair thus marks her as an emotionally supportive presence, even before the novel reveals that she has been teaching Catching helpful techniques to manage her anger. Catching’s mom’s statement that Catching has inherited “all the strengths of the Catching women” asserts that an Aboriginal identity can be a source of resilience and power despite the suffering that racism has caused Aboriginal people.
Themes
Catching and her mom hear thunder. They rush down to their car, parked on level ground where it’s likely to flood. By the time they’ve driven back to the road, it’s raining so hard they can’t see. Overflow from a nearby river strikes the car, banging Catching’s head against a window. When she regains consciousness, a branch has broken through one of the car’s windows and her mom is trying desperately to unlatch Catching’s seat belt. Water floods into the car over Catching’s head.
Michael originally asked to interview Catching because she witnessed the fire at the children’s home—but she is choosing to start her story with a dangerous flash flood instead: water, not fire. This unexpected storytelling decision suggests that Michael doesn’t understand at all how many events lead up to the eventual fire.
Themes
The seat belt unlatches. Water carries Catching away. She’s convinced she’ll drown until she recalls her mom saying that she inherited her female ancestors’ strengths. She knows there’s something about her “Nanna Sadie” she needs to recall. As water slips into her mouth, she remembers her mom telling her that the government seized Sadie as a child, due to a law that allowed Aboriginal children to be taken from their families. Officials put Sadie on a boat to “a bad place,” not realizing that Sadie, born during a storm, could control water. Sadie leapt from the ship and swam “like a fish” all the way back to her family.
From the 1860s until the 1970s, the Australian government enacted a series of laws and policies that allowed government officials to forcibly remove children from Aboriginal families and place them in institutions or with white foster families—with the goal of assimilating the children into white Australian culture. These children are sometimes called the “Stolen Generations.” Catching recalls the resilience of her “Stolen Generations” great-grandmother to survive the flood; by setting up this parallel between Catching and her Nanna Sadie, the novel may be implying that Catching will have to survive an abuse of power like the one Sadie escaped.
Themes
Catching swims “like a fish,” in the manner of her Nanna Sadie, to the water’s surface. She can breathe again. As the current carries her along, she grabs onto a tree root and uses it to climb ashore, where she sees her mom sprawled on the ground. At first she yells at her mom to wake up, but then she checks her mom’s pulse and realizes she’s dead.
The major incident hanging over Beth and Michael’s lives is Beth’s death, the death of a child. In Catching’s story, the first major incident is the death of her mom. This connection suggests that grief and trauma may have impacted all three characters in similar ways.
Themes
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