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Chapter 4. Catching: The Sunset
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 cries beside the body, demanding her mom’s return, until she falls asleep. When she wakes, the sky has two suns, the trees have lost their leaves, everything is gray, and her mom’s body has vanished. Catching wonders whether the body moved or if she did. When her head begins hurting, she touches her hair and finds blood. Catching is too grief-stricken to be scared. She recalls that as her mom unclipped the seatbelt, she ordered Catching to “live.”
Catching seems to describe a fantastical transformation of the world. Yet previously in the novel, gray has represented the deadening power of grief, which implies that the grayness she perceives may be symbolic of her grief at her mother’s death—and thus that other fantastical details in her story may be symbolic as well. That Catching’s mom ordered her to “live” emphasizes that Catching’s mom was a positive force in Catching’s life, imbuing her with emotional and psychological resilience.
Themes
Catching, feeling another surge of grief, wonders whether she’ll “fade away . . . Like the colours in this place.” Yet she recalls her mom’s command and resolves to live even if she doesn’t want to. She drinks from a nearby stream, sharpens a nearby branch into a spear, and starts trying to stab fish in the stream. Then a pack of fanged, muscular beasts that “shimmer” appear far off. When they start running for her, she sprints into the trees—all the way to a “cliff wall.”
When Catching wonders whether grief will cause her to fade away “like the colours in this place,” it makes even more explicit that the other world’s grayness symbolizes emotional pain and deadness. Meanwhile, the strange beasts that “shimmer” emphasize that Catching’s story is fantastical—and may cause readers to wonder whether Michael will believe her.
Themes
Cornered, Catching drops her spear and climbs the cliff. She has almost reached the top when she runs out of handholds. She decides to rest on a nearby ledge but has to make a dangerous jump to reach it. As she jumps, she realizes that she’s hearing her own voice telling her to live as well as her mom’s. Catching breaks her hand grabbing the ledge but reaches it. As she rests, she hears voices overhead. When she calls out to them, one voice says, “It speaks”—and discusses with a second voice about how girls always speak, “scream,” and “cry.”
When Catching hears her own voice telling her to live, it represents that grief has not made Catching passively suicidal: she is trying to survive for her own sake, not only because her mother told her to. The eerie voices discussing how girls always “scream” and “cry,” meanwhile, hints that this other world may contain predators or abusers.
Themes
Two gray, robed creatures with “leathery” wings fly down from the clifftop to Catching’s ledge. They wear humanoid masks, but Catching is sure they aren’t human. There’s a “wrongness” about them that makes her wish she had a weapon. When she asks what they are, they tell her they are “Fetchers” and identify themselves as First and Second. Catching concludes that First is in charge.
The Fetchers’ “leathery” wings suggest that the creatures are batlike, while their human masks suggest that they are concealing something inhuman underneath. Catching’s attentiveness to which Fetcher is in charge hints that questions of power will be important to her interactions with them.
Themes
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First and Second discuss Catching’s colors, “like a rainbow.” When Second asks whether there’s anyone with her, she says she’s there with her mom, father (who in fact left the family for a different female partner a long time ago), and several others. First laughs, calls her a liar, and says he and Second will “fetch” her. Suddenly, Second comments unhappily that she’s wounded. When First says they can heal her, Second asks, “Only to be broken?” First claims that it isn’t their concern: they just need to fetch her, fix her, and bring her “to him.” The Fetchers jump on Catching and, despite her struggles, apprehend her.
Intense colors symbolize emotional and psychological health. Catching retains many colors, “like a rainbow,” in the gray place despite her mom’s death, which suggests that she remains resilient despite her grief. Second’s prediction that Catching is going to be “broken” and First’s desire to bring Catching “to him” hint that the Fetchers are just agents of a more dangerous predator or abuser.
Themes
