Moo: A Novel

The work clothes that Mrs. Falala gives Reena and Luke function as a symbol of the change in their identities. One of the first things that Reena notices about Beat when she first meets her at Birchmere Farm is her clothing: “tall black rubber boots” and “canvas overalls” (48). These clothes are foreign to Reena, but she has already noticed that the other teenagers at Birchmere wear similar outfits. These other teens impress Reena with their unfamiliar skills. They “fill feed bins and water buckets and climb fences and tromp through sawdust and lean against cows”—the very same cows that seem so enormous and intimidating to Reena (31). To Luke, these teenagers seem almost superhuman. He begins to draw heroes that look like “farmers brandishing halters and conquering giant cow-like creatures” (31). When Mrs. Falala later presents Luke and Reena with their very own work clothes in “The Outfits,” Reena uses the same language to describe them that she used to describe the clothing worn by the local teenagers at Birchmere: Mrs. Falala gives them “tall black rubber boots” and “canvas overalls” (121). This repeated