Foster

“Part of me wants my father to leave me here while another part of me wants him to take me back, to what I know. I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.”

This line summarizes the narrator’s combination of eagerness to grow up and nervousness about change. She anticipates her own coming transformation, articulating a childhood experience of liminality.

“I keep my foot in the water, and then, when I think I can’t stand it any longer, my thinking changes, and I can.”

Adjusting to the hot water of her first bath at the Kinsellas’ symbolizes the way the girl must adapt to new future demands, most of them positive. This quote also reflects the narrator’s reliance on the power of “thinking” rather than feeling.

“As soon as she says this, I realise she is just like everyone else, and I wish I was back at home so that all the things I do not understand could be the same as they always are.”

The narrator is unusually petulant about being told that she’s too young to understand, reflecting her craving for knowledge. However, she also displays development in accepting that there will always be things she doesn’t understand and that there is comfort in familiarity even if it is less than positive.

“Without me, I am certain she would tip over.”

Though she cannot fully articulate it, the girl senses her grounding effect on Edna Kinsella, who has been unbalanced in some way—though the narrator shows the literal thinking of children in understanding the source of the imbalance to be the water bucket.

“Everything changes into something else, turns into some version of what it was before.”

Thinking of the clay that the girl’s sisters throw around and noting the substance’s eventual return to ground, Keegan portrays Rural Life as Shaped by Natural Rhythms. Again, the girl anticipates her maturation while suggesting that the foundation of things does not change.

“She is like the man, doing it all without rushing but neither one of them ever really stops.”

The Kinsellas’ characters are illustrated by this observation by the narrator, portraying the couple as hardworking but stable, well-organized, and consistent. Their routine emulates nature’s rhythms.

“There’ll not be a man in the parish will catch you without a long-handled net and a racing bike.”

Kinsella’s assessment of the girl’s capacity for speed is constructed to both give her a sense of self-worth and make her laugh. However, given the context of shame and danger regarding sex in 1980s Ireland, it also hints that he wants the girl to be able to escape the threat of men.

“I keep waiting for something to happen, for the ease I feel to end—to wake in a wet bed, to make some blunder, some big gaffe, to break something—but each day follows on much like the one before.”

The narrator enumerates her many fears about how she might destroy her peace at the Kinsellas’ home, implicitly influenced by how hard her biological parents have been on her. Here, routine is the antidote to such youthful anxiety.

“The little bird seems uneasy—as though she can scent the cat, who sometimes sits there.”

This sparrow visits when Edna is upstairs crying after Kinsella insists that they take the girl shopping. It symbolizes both Kinsella and the narrator reacting to the ghosts of things that are no longer present. Kinsella is “uneasy” at the memory of his son, while the girl is nervous at the memory of her father.

“Some part of me wishes it would go away, that it would cloud over so I could see properly.”

The narrator’s complaint about the strong sun in Gorey represents the way she cannot see the fact of the boy’s death behind the bright honesty of all the Kinsellas’ other doings. She assumes that Edna always says what things are because she does it so often and thus misses the unspoken signs of the son.

“We pass houses whose doors and windows are wide open, long, flapping clotheslines, gravelled entrances to other lanes.”

During an instance of atmospheric spookiness, the girl sees these seemingly empty houses as she goes to the wake with Edna. The sight hints at ghosts and the many parallel lives that people can lead—in the same way that the girl is living a parallel existence with the Kinsellas and they with her.

“Chamomile grows along these ditches, wood sage and mint, plants whose names my mother somehow found the time to teach me.”

After hearing that she has been living in a dead boy’s clothes for some time, the narrator retreats to a fond memory of her biological mother. It is one of few positive associations with Ma in the text and emphasizes the importance of nature to the girl’s world. These herbs all have medicinal properties, aligning them with the concept of care.

“Here I must watch my head, my step.”

Mildred’s cottage reflects Mildred herself in its slovenliness and uneven ground. Too late, the narrator understands that she must be careful in this woman’s presence and home.

“As soon as he takes it, I realize my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won’t have to feel this.”

As John and the girl walk to the beach, this line underscores Da as a foil for Kinsella. The moment allows the girl to face her father’s neglect directly, which hurts so badly that she almost wants to let go of the comfort of Kinsella, as his affection is the catalyst for her realization.

“Maybe the way back will somehow make sense of the coming.”

Though couched in the context of the beach walk, Keegan once more involves the theme of Rural Life as Shaped by Natural Rhythms as the girl considers the merits of circularity. Her thought gets at the impossibility of fully understanding an experience while one is within it and offers hope that even after being returned to her parents, she will retain the value of her time with the Kinsellas.

“A good woman can look far down the line and smell what’s coming before a man even gets a sniff of it.”

In this line, Kinsella expresses one aspect of his respect for women, particularly his wife. It indicates Edna’s ability to place some emotional boundaries around her relationship with the girl, while Kinsella is unable. This characterizes Kinsella as more open while establishing patriarchal privilege as part of the reason.

“You couldn’t stay here forever with us two old forgeries.”

One of several instances of childlike malapropisms, the girl mishears Edna likely saying “old fogeys.” This beat of humor makes the woman’s words all the more poignant; the girl is still a child who wants to stay forever and grow up with the Kinsellas. The mistaken word, “forgeries,” also suggests that the Kinsellas are understanding themselves to be mere imitations of the girl’s parents rather than parental figures in their own right.

“It’s an odd system, taking the calves off the cows and giving them milk replacement so Kinsella can milk their mothers and sell the milk, but they look content.”

Extending the symbol of the lost heifer, this sample of the workings of a dairy farm suggests that calves can be happy without proximity to their birth mothers. The narrator finds it odd, but she too is “content” with a “replacement.”

“As we gather all these things together, I remember the days we spent, where we got them, what was sometimes said, and how the sun, for most of the time, was shining.”

Leaning on the motif of light, the girl’s reflections as she packs her bag to return home clarify that she has loved her time with the Kinsellas. The “mostly” shining sun represents the openness of the house interspersed with the initial hiding of the dead son.

“I stand there breathing, making the sounds for a while to hear them coming back, one last time.”

Playing with the bubbling of the bucket in the water of the well is a childlike activity. Even with the sounds, she struggles to form a final goodbye. Additionally, she finally is the one breathing instead of the wind, connoting her greater sense of emotional self.

“Her doing this in front of Kinsella makes me blush.”

The narrator shows her sensitivity to Kinsella in this line, as well as her more developed sense of propriety. Though her mother does nothing wrong, she associates Ma’s breastfeeding in front of company with uneducated behavior, reinforcing Ma’s associations of the girl’s new manners with oppression.

“This is my mother I am speaking to but I have learned enough, grown enough, to know that what happened is not something I need ever mention.”

Kinsella’s maxim of The Power of the Unspoken is rooted in the narrator. She is aware of her own growth and makes a conscious decision to privilege her connection to the Kinsellas over her blood relationship to her mother.

“My heart does not so much feel that it is in my chest as in my hands, and that I am carrying it along swiftly as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside of me.”

Communicating the panicked sadness she feels around her foster parents leaving, the narrator at last understands her heart as a precious thing for which she bears responsibility. This is one of Keegan’s rare uses of figurative language when portraying the narrator’s thoughts, highlighting her newfound tie to her feelings and sensations.