The House in the Cerulean Sea

“He passed by posters nailed to the walls, the same messages that hung in all the DICOMY-sanctioned orphanages he’d been to. They showed smiling children below such legends as we’re happiest when we listen to those in charge and a quiet child is a healthy child and who needs magic when you have your imagination?” 

This early introduction to the propaganda campaign of DICOMY establishes the novel’s references to the book 1984 while indicating to the reader the type of treatment and expectations these children are subject to. The slogans, hung in the orphanage, discourage children from thinking independently, from speaking up, and from using their natural gifts. They additionally foreshadow the posters that will appear throughout the rest of the narrative, increasing in density—or in Linus’s notice of them—as the novel progresses.

“He’d learned early on in life that if he didn’t speak, people often forgot he was there or even existed. His mother had told him once when he was a child that he blended in with the paint on the wall, only memorable when one was reminded it was there at all.”

References to Linus’s mother appear discreetly throughout the text. The novel deals heavily with the theme of nature versus nurture, though this theme primary focuses on the magical children. In the passages that refer to Linus’s childhood, the novel reinforces the question. Linus’s mother’s admonitions consistently minimized him and instilled in him a quiet anxiety of the world. Through Linus’s growing relationships with the children, he is able to construct for himself a new image of what kind of person he is and can be.

“The only things that belonged to him were the clothes on his back and the mouse pad, a faded picture of a white sandy beach and the bluest ocean in the world. Across the top was the legend don’t you wish you were here? Yes. Daily.” 

Linus’s mousepad is referenced frequently in the novel and is used as a mechanism to illustrate his deepest longings and wishes. It is also notable for its introduction of