Scat

When Nick’s father returns from the Iraq War having lost his right arm to an insurgent attack, Nick immediately immobilizes his own right arm and learns to be a “lefty” in solidarity. This act of empathetic self-sacrifice is an indication of Nick’s caring and sympathetic nature. But it is also symbolic of the way the wounds and scars of war are borne not only by soldiers, but by their families. Every time Nick struggles to eat, write, or play sports with his right arm in a sling, it serves as a tacit reminder of the extra challenges that children of service members can face. 

The large, anvil-shaped scar on Mrs. Starch’s chin is her most frequently mentioned feature. Early in the novel, it is grotesque and unsettling, like an oversized wart on the face of a stereotypical witch; its “anvil” shape, likewise, corresponds to her hard and uncaring nature. Toward the end of the book, though, after Mrs. Starch’s character has been more fully and sympathetically developed, Mrs. Starch reveals the scar is from an injury she received trying to save an osprey chick. The change in perception of the scar, then, recapitulates in miniature the change in the perception of her character; the anvil shape comes to represent not hard-hearted malignity but a person scarred by the sacrifices she has made for the sake of helpless animals.