43 pages • 1 hour read
Anne CassidyLooking for JJ
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Feral Cats
According to Lucy, when the man-made lake was filled in, several feral cats drowned and still haunt the lake and the surrounding park. The angry cats are rumored to attack people and scratch out their eyes. After Lucy tells Jennifer the story about the feral cats, Jennifer spies one of the cats while coming back from the restroom later that day. After Jennifer kills Michelle, she realizes that the sole witness to her crime is another cat.
Throughout the novel, the wild and uncanny cats come to represent a wild and violent aspect of the world—antisocial and without rules. Their behavior is echoed in Jennifer’s own violent actions and in the cruelty of the world at large. Because the cats are feral, they are neither domesticated nor well integrated into human society, which parallels Jennifer’s own childhood of neglect and abandonment. There is no befriending or saving these cats—they will always be angry and on the outskirts. Jennifer is associated with the cats, but they are also on one end of the spectrum in which Jennifer falls somewhere in the middle. She is not entirely uncivilized but walks close to the edge of the line between civilization and wilderness.
Macy the Doll
Macy is Jennifer’s favorite childhood toy, who she takes with her as she moves from different apartments and caregivers. Macy, who is a doll model, has many different outfit changes and lives an imagined, glamorous life. As a young child, Macy keeps Jennifer company and helps to represent her mother even when Carol isn’t present. Jennifer idealizes both the doll and her mother as beautiful women with glamorous careers. Throughout the novel, however, Macy becomes increasingly neglected. At one point, while Jennifer is staying with her grandmother, her mother buys her a new version of Macy, but Jennifer is uninterested. When Jennifer moves to Berwick, Michelle mocks Macy as a child’s toy. Macy’s decline mirrors Carol’s decline throughout the novel. While Jennifer at first idealizes both the doll and her mother, as she grows up, she realizes that reality is often much different than appearances. As she grows out of playing with dolls and moves nearer to adolescence, she understands that her mother is not the glamorous model she once seemed. Jennifer can no longer maintain the illusion that Carol is loving, supportive, or a good mother, and by the end of the novel, she can no longer picture a happy life together.
Photographs
Alice is haunted by photographs of herself as she tries to keep her identity a secret from the world. Old photographs of her, including one taken by her mother and sold to a newspaper, continue to circulate in newspapers, tabloids, and on missing person posters. Alice becomes increasingly paranoid that someone will see her photograph and recognize her. In many of the newspaper articles, the significance of Alice’s appearance is emphasized, with columnists describing her face as the face of a killer. Despite this, however, even people who have seen her on posters or in newspapers largely fail to recognize her. While these sources emphasize the way that physical appearances can define a person, Alice looks like a normal and unremarkable teenage girl.
Photographs are also significant to Alice’s relationship with her mother, Carol. At first, Carol works as a model and has pictures of herself hung up all around the house. Significantly, she has very few pictures of Alice, except for a few baby pictures. Later, she begins to pose for pornographic photographs when she is short on money. Those who know about Carol’s new job also judge her based on appearances, calling her a prostitute and teasing Alice about her. While Carol herself may be vain and shallow, the way that other people view her indicates the way in which appearance plays a central and often negative role, especially when it comes to women. For both Alice and Carol, their image is entirely out of their control, no matter how hard they try to avoid it or harness its power.
