The Face on the Milk Carton

Janie’s questions about her identity form the backbone of the novel. Even before she suspects her kidnapping, Janie thinks about how her name shapes perceptions of her identity. Judging her given name “too dull” (2), she prefers “Jayyne Jonstone,” calling it “the name you would have if you designed sequined gowns for a living, or pointed to prizes on television quiz shows” (3). By changing the spelling of her name, Janie tries on new identities. When she finds out that she really has another identity, though, Janie longs for the simplicity of life as “Janie Johnson.”

Janie’s focus on identity only increases after she sees her photo on the milk carton. In the immediate aftermath of the discovery, she believes her identity has been fractured. Janie “learned that her body could function without her” as it goes through the motions of a normal school day (13). That split feeling intensifies as Janie begins to remember her childhood and reaches its apex when Janie prepares to speak with Mrs. Spring: “A split personality,” she thinks, “I am truly two people” (184). Because the novel ends without revealing the results of Janie’s conversation, readers cannot know whether the split in Janie’s sense of self resolves.

Although Janie’s struggles with identity shape the novel, Reeve, too, struggles to define himself in a way that he likes. “I’m sort of like a flag,” he tells Janie, “A big banner flapping in the wind. YOU’RE DUMB, says the flag” (17). Reeve’s example provides hope that Janie may attain a healthy self-definition. He once told Janie that “Grades are what Megan and Lizzie and Todd do, not me,” yet Reeve manages to become an academic achiever (73). Neither Reeve nor Janie has a fixed identity.

The theme of identity often appears in bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novels, though not usually with quite as many complications as Janie’s story. In the midst of finding out her true identity, she’s also trying to learn who she is in her physically maturing body as she navigates sexual interactions with Reeve. Likewise, her interest in becoming Jayyne at the beginning of the novel implies that she is searching for a new, self-made identity when her unknown history surfaces. The more natural search for identity that Janie should be experiencing at her age is complicated by the question of her birth parents.