Ms. Bixby's Last Day

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains a description of death and a traumatic work accident.

Anderson uses three narrators in Ms. Bixby’s Last Day. While each of the students is quite distinct, one thing all of them share is a life of futility. Topher describes himself as fading into the background of his family. His parents no longer pay more than three seconds worth of attention to any of his drawings. He perceives this trend of family disconnection to continue unabated and finds his refuge from it in the fantasy worlds he creates. Steve, on the other hand, lives beneath the perpetual vigilance of his perfectionistic parents, who view any grade below an A as a crisis. He feels constantly measured against and dominated by his older, driven sister and takes refuge by fleeing to Topher’s house to participate in his fantasies. Brand endures the deepening futility of a father who is physically unable to return to work and who has given up on the possibility of rehabilitation. Brand has become his caregiver, providing for all the household needs while his father sits before the television. Brand escapes into thoughts of abandoning his father, forcing him to care for himself. Beyond these real, seemingly hopeless examples, however, Anderson posits an even greater instance of futility: Maggie’s battle against pancreatic cancer. As Steve notes, the one-year survival rate for this lethal illness is only 25%. The five-year survival rate is only 10%. These high mortality rates are due to the fact that most cancers of this type have advanced before detection. The narrative uses these examples of futility to express the notion that many different people face futility of different degrees in disparate ways.

While the author hints early in the narrative that Maggie will not recover from the disease, the text does not suggest that people should surrender to the futility they experience, even if it appears to be insuperable. Rather, using the example of the three narrators, Anderson posits the idea that persistently resisting the most intractable forms of futility results in growth, wisdom, intimacy, and sometimes the defeat of the sources of futility. Symbolically, when the three narrators launch their quest to have one last party with their beloved Maggie, they become references to similar journeys. Anderson refers to Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Tolkien’s hero, Bilbo, superficially resembles the narrators. The author bears this out when the boys ask Maggie to finish reading them The Hobbit as they sit on a hilltop, listening to the conclusion of Bilboa’s adventure. Like the three wise men—or magi—whose story comes from Matthew 2:1-12 of the Christian Bible, the three sixth graders seek their chosen teacher in an attempt to bear those gifts she says she desires. Like the three narrators, the biblical magi end up getting turned around and needing help. They likewise encounter devious men who attempt to trick them, nevertheless outsmarting them.

Fueling the boys’ desire to persist in their quest are their unspoken, individual histories with Maggie. With each of the narrators, she interacts specifically in ways that addressed the futility that plagues them. They do not seek Maggie assuming that they bring a cure. As Brand points out, cheesecake cannot cure cancer. As Maggie has revealed to them, however, persistently working toward one’s goals in the face of the gravest futility yields hope, strength, fellowship, and sometimes success.