Hurricane Child

The difference between children and adults is set up early on when Caroline remembers being on Mister Lochana’s boat with her mother. He says to her mother, regarding Caroline’s desire to correct people who call him the wrong name, “To be a child and to be passionate, eh?” and Caroline asks, “Does that mean adults aren’t passionate about anything?” (3). As a coming-of-age story, the novel portrays the issues specific to adolescence. While these issues are in many ways childlike, adults also sometimes experience them.

The saying that “children are children because they know nothing about death” (44) is something both Caroline and Kalinda have heard. They bond over this shared experience, and they both believe that they are no longer children because they both have witnessed death. Caroline continues to go back and forth on whether she is a child. She says her father now looks at her “like he has realized I am no longer a child at all” (48), and when Kalinda discusses dreams and goals and loss, Caroline decides that maybe she really “is still just a child, while Kalinda is the only one who isn’t a child anymore” (85). Caroline deals with complicated ideas for her age—like love and death and the purpose of her existence—while still behaving like a child at times: sneaking into the condo, throwing rocks, slamming her bedroom door.

By the end of the novel, she is 13 yet no longer offended by being called a child: “There’s much more in this life to fear than just spirits, and if I let fear rule my every move, I will become nothing more than a little ghost child myself” (202). Caroline’s behavior dramatically changes throughout the novel. She was stuck in her past and in the immense grief of missing her mother, but by the end, she is looking forward to her final school year at the Catholic school before high school.

Caroline goes from having no friends in the beginning of the novel to having Kalinda as a romantic interest in Barbados, Marie as a new friend, a half-sister in Bernadette, a step-sister in Katie, and a new chapter for herself and her parents. Miss Joe is her mentor throughout the story, especially in the theme of friendship. Miss Joe shares about her own friendship with Caroline’s mother, how it was, and how it’s changed, and Caroline is eventually able to open up to Miss Joe about everything.

Kalinda, who doesn’t choose her friends easily, becomes Caroline’s first friend. They hold hands despite the fact that most girls their age have stopped doing so, “even if they’re friends, because that’s something babies do, but Kalinda doesn’t seem to care at all that we’re twelve years old and should not be holding hands as friends” (103). Kalinda makes Caroline feel validated several times, and Caroline says she is “the one person who’s made me feel like I deserve to be alive” (117). Her relationship with Kalinda in many ways parallels the friendship that Miss Joe had with Caroline’s mother when they were young. When Kalinda asks Caroline how Miss Joe knew her mother, Caroline tells her they were best friends and almost adds that they were in love (140).

Caroline is surprised to hear that Miss Joe still talks to her mother every Christmas and on their birthdays, and Kalinda asks Caroline to write back to her. By the end of the novel, Caroline has experienced and understands the ways in which friendships can change yet remain. When she opens up to Marie in the final chapter, it suggests that they will soon become good friends and that Caroline is open to building relationships with her growing family.