Betty

“Didn’t they know this about him? That he was the wisest man in the whole damn county? Possibly the whole world?”

Betty asks these rhetorical questions about her father after she learns that he was attacked by white miners for being Cherokee. The questions demonstrate the naive conviction that a child’s parents are the center of the universe. This represents Betty’s initial mindset, which evolves as she grows up to see her father as human.

“All around, the hills stood like a great exclamation from man to the heavens. Known as the foothills of the Appalachians, the exposed sandstone formed ridges, cliffs, and gorges shaped and cut by glacier melting. Covered in a green mix of moss and lichen, the ancient sandstone was named after the things it resembled. There was the Devil’s Tea Table, Lame Deer, and the Giant’s Shadow. Names handed down to each new generation as if they were as valuable as heirloom jewels.”

This use of imagery brings to life the landscape that surrounds Breathed, Ohio. This description emphasizes the land’s ancient beginnings and its role as a repository of generational memory. By naming the earth, their ancestors brought it to life and passed down their perception of the world, a form of Storytelling as an Expression of Love.

“In her most wholesome form, Breathed was a wife and mother who made sure to hang her flag banners on her porch rails every Fourth of July. At her darkest, she was the place you could bleed to death in without a single open wound.”

This metaphor compares Breathed to a woman. This metaphor emphasizes how thoughtful and caring the town can be while also showing its ability to suck the life out of someone. The fact that Breathed is metaphorically described as a woman shows that she is powerful yet hurt, like the women in Betty’s life.

“‘Everything we need to live a life as long as we’re allowed has been given to us in nature,’ he’d say. ‘That’s not to claim if you eat this plant, you will never die, for the plant itself will one day die, and you are no more special than it. All we can do is try to heal the things that can be healed and ease the complaints of the things that cannot be. At the very least, we bring the earth inside us and restore the knowledge that even the smallest leaf has a soul.’”

Landon teaches his children about Respect for All Living Beings and reminds them that death is a natural part of life. He constantly tells his children that they are special, but here, he notes that they are no more special than a plant. By saying this, he teaches them that all beings are as special as they are. He says “we bring the earth inside us” both literally and figuratively—they eat plants from their garden, but he wants them to let the earth inside their heart.

“And I’ve never seen a butt for a face before but if you don’t turn around right now, I’m gonna take my daddy’s pocketknife and cut you up into tiny pieces to mail to your ugly momma in a heart-shaped box. She’ll have to write letters to all the family tellin’ ’em what became of you and she’ll weep and weep until they have to put her down like a rabid dog.”

Betty says this to a child at school who makes a comment about her skin color. This quote shows the humor that the author uses in the book to help ease the pain of Betty’s childhood. It also shows Betty’s ability to tell a story, even in a quick insult. She uses figurative language to paint a picture for the boy.

“‘It’s not his fault if he cries or says things that are a little peculiar,’ Dad told us. ‘Dust enters into his ears and makes a great racket in his head. A racket we can’t understand because we don’t have to suffer it like he does. But he’s still your baby brother. His feet still run to us. It’s his mind that runs somewhere else. We have to be respectful of him. We have to understand that the things we do and say will affect him.’”

Landon tries to explain Lint’s mental state to the rest of his children by saying that dust gets into his ears and makes a racket that only he can hear. By drawing a metaphor, Landon helps his children feel empathy for their brother—they can support him without experiencing what he does.

“She trembled, curling herself into a ball. For all the ways she wanted away from life, she was absolutely terrified of what that meant. What was death to a woman like her? Maybe at that moment, so close to it, she worried death would be her over and over again. Her coiling up into herself until she could taste her own breasts and choke on her own thighs.”

When Alka slits her wrists, Betty reflects on what death might mean. She imagines what her mother fears: that instead of a release, death might be an infinite loop of what she is already experiencing. To Alka, this would be the only thing worse than death. The image of her coiled up references the idea of facing her own body, the thing that holds the memories that have plagued her entire life.

“Fire hates water and water hates fire. Only the earth itself can come between flame and liquid to ease their old war.”

Landon personifies the elements to explain their relationship. Their aversion to each other mirrors the human behavior of war.

“I suppose she said it because it’s easier to say than the truth, which is that the hurt stays with you as certain as the day is long. It’s like bein’ in a storm. The cold wind whippin’ you about. The rain beatin’ down hard. I try to find the child within me as if she still lives. I try to find her and pull her from the storm and ask her, ‘What will you be when you grow up?’ That way, I can pretend her future is not me. I can pretend the only reason her father sees her to bed, is to cover her up and wish her beautiful dreams. You know what the heaviest thing in the world is, Betty? It’s a man on top of you when you don’t want him to be.”

Alka compares the pain of her abuse to a storm—she has no control over what it does to her, and she cannot change the child within her because her past is sealed. She asks Betty a rhetorical question to help her understand what she has not experienced. She says that the heaviest thing in the world is a man on top of you because he has taken away your freedom.

“Emily Dickinson shared her poet self so my father would know the most sacred text of mankind is in the way we do and do not rhyme, leaving John Steinbeck to gift my father a compass in his mind so he would always appreciate he was east of Eden and a little south of heaven. Not to be left out, Sophia Alice Callahan made sure there was a part of my father that would always remain a child of the forest, while Louisa May Alcott penned the loyalty and hope within his soul. It was Theodore Dreiser who was left the task of writing my father the destiny of being an American tragedy only after Shirley Jackson prepared my father for the horrors of that very thing.”

Betty alludes to authors to explain how she thought her father was scripted by famous writers when she was a child. This exemplifies Betty’s belief that her father is greater than human. It also shows how Betty makes sense of the world through her love of literature.

“As the juice dripped down her chin, I thought of how God exists in little ways we don’t always see unless we happen to be looking at the very moment a sister dares the demons and reminds you that not all paradises have gone just yet.”

Betty watches Fraya eat a cherry from the tree behind their grandparents’ house. While their grandfather was alive, he forbade them from eating the cherries, so when Fraya dares the demons, she dares her dead grandfather. At several points in the novel, Betty’s grandfather usurps God’s authority. When he beats his daughter, Alka, he says, “God’s work has been done here” (14), arrogating to himself God’s authority to judge and punish. In forbidding the children from eating the cherries, he takes on the role of God in the biblical creation story. This episode subverts the patriarchal authority of the creation story: Whereas Eve loses paradise after disobeying God’s instructions, Betty and Fraya gain paradise when they choose to ignore their grandfather’s prohibition.

“All of the female figurines you could take apart because they were boxes or bowls. They all held somethin’. In their skirts, in their bodies, they all held somethin’. None of the male figurines held anything. They were solid. You couldn’t put anything in and you couldn’t take anything out. I suppose if you think about it long enough, you’ll see why this is like real life.”

Alka sees her experience in everything around her. Her mother’s figurines symbolize the fact that women carry other people’s burdens, while men simply exist. Women must serve a purpose, whereas men are allowed to live.

“She had lived by the orders and commands of men. Her entire existence on earth and she had never once been allowed to be free. She had been imprisoned and owned, as if all of her value was wrapped up in how large a load she could carry on her back.”

Betty sees the women in her family in this pony’s story. Empathizing with the pony, she cries while thinking about the way she has been imprisoned, used, and objectified, never allowed to be free.

“‘Some men know the exact amount of money in their bank accounts,’ she continued. ‘Other men know how many miles are on their car and how many more miles it’ll handle. Other men know the batting average of their favorite baseball player and more other men know the exact sum Uncle Sam has screwed ’em. Your father knows no such figures. The only numbers Landon Carpenter has in his head are the numbers of stars in the sky on the days his children were born. I don’t know about you, but I would say that a man who has skies in his head full of the stars of his children, is a man who deserves his child’s love. Especially from the child with the most stars.’”

Alka describes Landon to Betty, emphasizing how different he is from other men. Other men are grounded in their daily life and material possessions, whereas Landon is grounded in the stars. Landon does not know what it is to keep score—only how to see the natural world as it connects to his own. This explanation also emphasizes Storytelling as an Expression of Love.

“‘I’m Flossie Carpenter,’ she said. ‘I’m the one whose brother fell off the water tower. But he’s not really dead. He’s just drawin’ pictures of things in the field. He’ll be back before dinner.’”

This is a quote from the Breathanian article describing the gunfire that scared Flossie and a boy in the nighttime. Flossie’s quote emphasizes that she is unbothered by the gunfire and instead thinks of her brother Trustin. She follows their father’s instructions to say that Trustin will come back before dinner, buying into the hope of this story so as not to face the truth.

“The winter was something the hills had to bear. Something we all had to.”

Betty personifies the hills and connects to them by commiserating over the winter. This statement shows that Betty thinks of the earth as a living thing experiencing pain and pleasure along with humans, a worldview that she learned from her father.

“‘Dad says men who mount dead animals on their walls are men who think they’re more important than they really are. He also says that only men with small penises kill an animal just to have a trophy.’ ‘Well, your dad must have a whole wall of dead animals then,’ he said with a satisfied grin.”

This quote represents the clash between Betty’s education from Landon and the school she has to attend in Breathed. Betty’s comment represents the humor present in her childish confidence, and the principal’s response ironically validates the premise of her insult.

“Her pregnancy eclipsed her. The bright light that had shone from her became darkened by the sphere she carried on her body. In this shadowed state, she seemed meaner, as if soaking in viciousness.”

Flossie’s pregnancy is the physical manifestation of her loss of bodily autonomy. She has sex with her husband not for her own pleasure but out of obligation, and she enters into motherhood not because she wants to but because others—including her own mother—have told her that she must. In Betty’s analogy, she is the sun and her pregnancy is the moon, leaving her in a shadowed state behind it. Without her freedom, hopes, and dreams, Flossie loses any kindness. She is no longer seen as a child, a woman, or an individual but as a mother.

“‘You know in some cultures a girl would be slapped when she first bleeds,’ Fraya said, softly resting her hand on my cheek. ‘Slapped hard, right across the face. But in other cultures, like the Cherokee, blood was seen as power.’”

Fraya’s comment juxtaposes the harsh treatment of young women in some cultures to the reverence shown to young women in their Cherokee culture. It also proposes blood as a symbol of power rather than weakness.

“I reached into my pocket and grabbed out the goodnights I had written earlier for Fraya. I dropped them into the urn, mixing them with her ashes. I scooped a handful out and, a little at a time, let my sister slip through my fingers. The pieces of paper separated from the ash as it floated in spirals in the wind. Whenever Dad honked, I released more. I felt the loss every time. The simple act of opening and closing my hand exhausted me. I was standing still, yet I was climbing a steep mountain. The dust of life, who will care? I will, Fraya. I will care that you are gone.”

Throughout the story, Betty, Flossie, and Fraya’s “goodnights” are a physical representation of their love for one another. Betty mixes her final goodnights with Fraya’s ashes as a symbol for her love, and she lets them go with Fraya’s ashes because they are meant to be with her. Betty’s final statement recognizes the inevitable death of all beings alongside the responsibility to remember the individuals who bring love into one’s life.

“I forgive you. Because one of these days, you’re gonna feel really bad about it and you’re gonna wish I was around so you could apologize. But I’ll be so far away from you, you’ll have to get on a rocket ship to find me. And they don’t let just anybody go to the stars. I’ll forgive you now, so that later, when you realize your life is horrible and that we could have been friends all along, you’ll know that at least I survived you.”

This statement marks a turning point for Betty as a character in that she shows Ruthis that kindness and forgiveness are the greater paths to take. She spent her childhood hating herself because of what Ruthis told her was true, but in this statement, she rises above it all to forgive Ruthis despite the fact that she has never apologized. At this point, Betty knows that cruelty catches up with people.

“‘Don’t you feel the flames lickin’ up your calves? Don’t you feel the heat around your heart? Don’t you feel your eyes meltin’ outta their sockets? Don’t you know, you’re already burnin’?’ I lowered the shotgun, no longer needing it as my weapon. ‘There ain’t a flame on this earth or in hell that ain’t got your name on it, Leland. You’re already burnin’.’”

As Betty paints an image of Leland burning, he begins to feel the flames and beg for help. Her description brings the flames to life. Simply by facing a woman who knows the truth, Leland begins to face his fate in hell.

“No matter how beautiful the pasture, it is the freedom to choose that makes the difference between a life lived and a life had.”

Betty considers this in the context of the pony, but it applies to her future as well. Betty leaves Breathed to exercise this freedom. This statement also hints at the act of rape that is so pervasive in her family’s story—the act strips a person of their fundamental right to choose.