85 pages • 2 hours read
Kathryn ErskineMockingbird
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
Caitlin Smith
Content Warning: All Character Analyses reference a school shooting.
As a first-person narrator, 10-year-old Caitlin Smith reveals her character not only in what she does but in what she thinks. And because she is the focus of a coming-of-age story, Caitlin undergoes the most dramatic change of the novel’s characters. If she begins in a world of black and white, she ends in a world bursting with color.
Caitlin has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, an autistic spectrum developmental disorder that affects her ability to interact comfortably with peers and her ability to adjust to sudden changes. She is bright; she is fascinated by words (she is never far from her dictionary) and has a gift for artistic expression. Her charcoal drawings have already attracted the admiration of teachers. Caitlin also displays an extreme sensitivity to physical stimulation (most notably floods of light or sudden harsh noise) that impacts her ability to adjust to school, to the classroom, and especially to the playground.
What she needs to work on, her counselor tells her, is her ability to read other people. She works to make eye contact with those she talks with. She studies the chart in the counselor’s office that matches moods to facial expressions. She struggles to understand the implications of other people’s emotional tone, including why her father collapses into tears so often or what the sadness in Michael’s eyes means. She immediately understands Josh to be a bully and must come to terms with a far more complicated reality. Although often well-intentioned (as, for instance, when she tries disastrously to make Rachel feel better after her spill on a bike), Caitlin’s interpersonal difficulties cause her to seek isolation; at the beginning of the novel, she often retreats to the protective private space of her brother’s bedroom (her “hidey-hole”), where the world is as simple as her black-and-white sketches.
Caitlin’s adjustment to her brother’s killing coincides with her adjustment to a complicated world (suggested by her embrace of crayons). Interacting with others demands empathy, or the ability to adopt the perspective of another—an ability she ultimately demonstrates at the school ceremony remembering the shooting victims.
Michael Schneider
What sticks in Caitlin’s head when she first meets Michael Schneider is his sad eyes, which remind Caitlin of Bambi’s eyes in the Disney animated movie. Michael is a first grader and in his own way struggles with the same reality as Caitlin. His mother was the teacher killed in the shooting. Now isolated from a father who is grieving in his own way, Michael is as alone as Caitlin. Their friendship marks an important evolution in Michael’s adjustment to the death of his mother and to a world that does not make sense.
Michael is defined by his willingness to open up to others. He is only six, and his fragile and vulnerable heart has yet to learn hate or the logic of holding grudges. He gives out his stickers to any kid on the playground who shows a little love or kindness. Alone of the community, Michael seems unwilling to scapegoat Josh. Michael’s open heart (he first appears just after Caitlin describes vividly the chest wound her brother suffered) provides Caitlin with an example of empathy. Without knowing the word, Michael simply embodies it.
Michael’s own character arc culminates in the novel’s final pages, as he finally plays football with his father and Josh—something Michael has been unwilling to do, struggling to understand how his father can seem “happy” in the wake of their shared loss. Notably, it’s Caitlin who encourages him to join the game; although it’s unclear whether she recognizes his father’s actions as an attempt to bond, she repays the lessons in empathy that Michael has offered her throughout the novel.
Harold Smith
Harold Smith, Caitlin’s father, is no Atticus Finch, though the novel draws heavily on To Kill a Mockingbird. Caitlin readily admits she much prefers the simplistic world of the movie, and she tries to make her world—including her father—fit its patterns. If Atticus Finch is stoic, quietly strong, and implacable in the face of uncertainties and threats, Harold Smith is not. He cannot adjust to the loss of both his wife (to cancer) and then his only son (to a school shooter). He reels from the implications of such a confusing and uncertain world. He isolates himself from his remaining child, and Caitlin is not entirely sure why.
For most of the novel, Harold Smith is emotionally distant, hunkered down in a hidey-hole of his own. His displays of grief initially make Caitlin “uncomfortable,” but her father ultimately shows Caitlin that strength of character does not mean denying emotions. Meanwhile, it is Caitlin who begins her father’s process of recovery. In insisting that the two of them cooperate to complete Devon’s Eagle Scout project, Caitlin is instrumental in reviving Harold’s heart. His tears at the school ceremony when he and Caitlin present the finished cabinet to the school are not the same tears he sheds alone: In completing the project, he has rediscovered the joy and the love of his daughter.
Devon Smith
It is difficult to think of Devon Smith as a character. He is dead before the novel even starts. He exists only in the memories and in the perception of the narrator, his adoring little sister. What Caitlin remembers, however, suggests the dimensions of his character. He embodies empathy, being caring and giving and open to others, as well as generous of heart and spirit. His commitment to the Scouts suggests his selflessness, his sense of sacrifice, his embrace of community, his ideals, and, most importantly, his willingness to act on those ideals.
Central to the presentation of Devon’s character is the closed door of his bedroom: “I want to be with Devon,” Caitlin admits, “I need to be with Devon. And I know Devon would open his door to me” (76). Indeed, what she remembers about their relationship reveals Devon’s compassion and patience with his little sister. They laughed together in his room, watching To Kill a Mockingbird more times than Caitlin can count. Mostly, however, Caitlin remembers the two of them doing schoolwork together and feeling a kind of serenity that the rest of world seldom gives her. Now that door is closed.
That Caitlin is not sure how to adjust to her brother’s murder is suggested when, at her father’s insistence, she posts a sign on the bedroom door identifying it as “Devon’s Room.” She wants to sketch her brother for the sign but struggles to capture his eyes. In her efforts to handle her Asperger’s, she has learned how important the eyes are in understanding a person. That she cannot bring herself to give her brother eyes suggests how she is coping with his death. At once there and not there, Devon is for Caitlin an absence so great he becomes a kind of presence, but ultimately a comforting one; at the school ceremony, she imagines Devon talking to her, assuring her of his continued love and her own strength.
