Previous
Symbols
In Catching Teller Crow, the color gray symbolizes unhealthy psychological paralysis caused by trauma and grief, whereas intense colors—yellow, green, blue, black, red, and so on—represent a psychologically healthy capacity for joy and growth despite traumatic experiences. This symbolism plays out most obviously in the story that Isobel Catching tells police detective Michael Teller and his 15-year-old daughter Beth, a ghost. Catching, having undergone a hugely traumatic experience, refuses to narrate what happened to her in direct, literal language. Instead, she tells Michael and Beth that she was kidnapped by fantastical beasts, winged and faceless, called Fetchers, who held her captive while two monsters called Feeds slowly and violently devoured all the colors in her body, turning her gray. Her only friend in captivity, a gray ghost named Crow who was the Feeds’ first victim, initially encouraged her to become gray and dead as a way of numbing her pain. It was only after Catching realized that she could banish the gray and regain her intense colors by summoning positive emotions, such as memories of courage or hopeful dreams of the future, that she regained the psychological strength to escape and confront the Feeds. The novel later reveals that the monstrous Feeds were, in fact, local rich man Alexander Sholt and police chief Derek Bell, who have been kidnapping, holding captive, and eventually murdering teenage girls for approximately 20 years. Given this context, the novel strongly implies that Isobel’s “turning gray” represents the aftermath of repeated sexual assaults by two violent adult men, a trauma that for a long time paralyzed her and Crow, preventing them from fighting back. It is only once Catching and Crow help each other regain their intense colors—that is, claw back a sense of their capacity for growth—that they can recognize their own power to fight back, escape their abusers, and move on from what happened to them.
Gray vs. Intense Colors Quotes in Catching Teller Crow
The Catching Teller Crow quotes below all refer to the symbol of Gray vs. Intense Colors. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 7. Beth: The Truths
Quotes
“Catching wasn’t lying. I know she wasn’t.”
“I don’t think she was lying, precisely. Just telling the truth in a different way.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10. Beth: The Deaths
Quotes
“I’m not telling you what happened to ask for help,” she said.
“Then why are you telling it?”
Catching drew her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. “To be heard.”
I was silent for a moment, thinking about that. Then I said, “Well, that kind of sounds like asking for help.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11. Catching: The Prisoner
Quotes
“He eats what’s inside our insides. The colours that live in our spirits. Do you think I was always a grey girl?”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13. Catching: The Grey
Quotes
“It is your grey. Like mine, but not. Everyone’s grey is their own.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
I can endure.
As long as I remember where I come from.
Who I come from.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14. Beth: The Colours
Quotes
Mum had been there my whole life, helping me be a butterfly girl.
Maybe all hopeful thoughts were just someone who loved us, reaching out from another side. Which meant I could be there for my family even after I’d crossed over!
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16. Beth: The Story
Quotes
I couldn’t bear to say that the colours weren’t real.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17. Catching: The Two
Quotes
If I’m dead inside, I’m free.
No.
If I’m dead inside I’m dead inside.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18. Catching: The Dream
Quotes
“If you can name it, you can catch it,” she calls. “If you can catch it, you can fight it. Everything has its opposite. Remember!”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19. Catching: The Catching
Quotes
No ticking clocks.
Just choices.
They measure the distance between who we are and who we’re turning into.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20. Catching: The Escape
Quotes
“This gray’s yours,” I say. “My colours are mine. I’m not carrying your shame for what you did. Only my pride. For surviving you.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Catching Teller Crow LitChart as a printable PDF.
Gray vs. Intense Colors Symbol Timeline in Catching Teller Crow
The timeline below shows where the symbol Gray vs. Intense Colors appears in Catching Teller Crow. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1. Beth: The Town
...longer appears in reflective surfaces, her dad says she looks the same: blue-eyed like him, black-haired and brown-skinned like her mom. Beth and her dad walk up a hill. Dust covers...
(full context)
...shocked Beth: Aunty Viv, who loved bright clothes and nail polish, was wearing an “old grey tracksuit” and unpainted nails. Though only Beth’s dad can perceive Beth’s ghost, Beth tried to...
(full context)
...didn’t literally hear her. The next time Beth saw her, she was wearing “her favorite pink dress,” which reassured Beth.
(full context)
Chapter 4. Catching: The Sunset
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...
(full context)
Chapter 5. Catching: The Other-Place
...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...
(full context)
...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...
(full context)
First and Second discuss Catching’s colors, “like a rainbow.” When Second asks whether there’s anyone with her, she says she’s there...
(full context)
Chapter 6. Catching: The Beneath
...information. She asks where they are. When he says that it’s “where we bring the colours,” she offers to give him colors in exchange for help in escaping. Second explains that...
(full context)
Chapter 7. Beth: The Truths
...say no, but then she remembers that after her death, she was traveling toward amazing colors until she heard Michael crying.
(full context)
Chapter 10. Beth: The Deaths
...the fire, and she says no: “The next part is about my friend. And the grey.”
(full context)
Chapter 11. Catching: The Prisoner
...girl with inward-turning feet and unnaturally long nails whose skin, hair, and eyes are all gray.
(full context)
...Crow is “a girl” like Catching. Crow retorts that they aren’t the same: Catching has colors—at least until “they” arrive. When Catching asks whether Crow means the Fetchers, Crow says the...
(full context)
Chapter 12. Catching: The Feed
...into her stomach below her navel, ripping her flesh; when he pulls his fingers out, colors cover them. He eats Catching’s colors from his fingers. Though Catching wants to scream in...
(full context)
Chapter 13. Catching: The Grey
...that she can escape by becoming dead and emotionless, so she won’t “mind being a grey girl.” When Catching says that she won’t become gray, Crow indicates Catching’s arm—where, Catching sees,...
(full context)
Catching, staring at her gray skin, wonders how she can live with the Feed’s fingermarks on her. She begins silently...
(full context)
Chapter 14. Beth: The Colours
...pleasure and a sense of being “alive.” Abruptly, the shadow vanishes, and a “sea of colours” appears ahead of Beth.
(full context)
The colors exert an enormous emotional pull on Beth, and they’re singing a song “like a mother...
(full context)
...speaking angrily to her before. Beth doesn’t want to explain everything that happened with the colors, so she just accepts his apology.
(full context)
Chapter 16. Beth: The Story
...place she could go. After some delay, she admits that there’s a place full of colors and her mom is there—but she hurries to say that she plans to stay with...
(full context)
...about something else. Beth looks at Catching closely and notices she seems more defined and colorful somehow. Catching tells them she’s going to tell them the rest of her story. She...
(full context)
Chapter 17. Catching: The Two
...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....
(full context)
Chapter 18. Catching: The Dream
...no idea how much time has passed, but more and more of her is becoming gray. One day, Crow cries over Catching’s grayness. Catching makes Crow say the relationship words with...
(full context)
...saving Catching’s life. Then she notices that a few strands of Crow’s hair have turned black. Catching, overjoyed, says aloud that colors can come back after they’ve been stolen.
(full context)
Crow, terrified of feeling emotions, starts plucking out the black strands of her hair. When Catching tries to stop her, Crow shouts that Catching and...
(full context)
Catching asks whether she’s regained any color. When Crow says no, Catching remembers when Crow told her that each person has their...
(full context)
...women, from Trudy to herself. Hope grows inside her, becoming a fire that burns the gray fingermarks off her arm. She can see a “blue vein” through her skin.
(full context)
...wrist and her own hair, says aloud that Catching isn’t dead and she herself isn’t gray. Then she asks, “No one comes?” Catching understands: Crow used to believe that girls needed...
(full context)
Chapter 19. Catching: The Catching
...to believe about her own powerlessness—and laughs at them. Catching likes Crow’s method of removing grayness, but hers is different: she must identify the feeling her gray represents and fight it....
(full context)
Chapter 20. Catching: The Escape
When the Fetchers enter Catching’s room, Crow—with black hair, brown skin, and brown eyes—knocks First over and breaks Second’s mask, revealing that he...
(full context)
...stunned by the nature around her. Crow declares herself and Catching “rainbow girls” who will color and be colored by the world.
(full context)
...a far-off light. When she and Crow approach it, they discover a locked cage containing colorful birds and the Feed, grinning. When the birds yell for help, Crow’s hair moves, forming...
(full context)
Chapter 22. Beth: The Beginning
...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...
(full context)
...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...
(full context)
...Grandpa Jim’s birthday party, which Beth knows is his way of “choosing the opposite of grey.”
(full context)
...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...
(full context)
