They Cage the Animals at Night

“I couldn’t believe Mom didn’t want me anymore. I tried to remember what bad thing I did for Mom to leave me here.”

This is the first moment Jennings has to process that his mother has left him behind; he is now a child in foster care. Burch writes in an innocent, matter-of-fact voice that reflects both his shock and his childlike innocence. No one has explained to Jennings why he is in a foster home, so he is left to ponder that question alone.

“‘There are no friends in here. They just hang around him and laugh when he laughs. They don’t want him to pick on them.’

‘What do you mean there are no friends in here? Aren’t we friends?’

He didn’t answer me. He sat looking out across the floor at the kids playing and fighting.” 

This exchange between Jennings and Mark on Jennings’ first day in the home exemplifies the children’s constant isolation. Because their lives are regimented and some children come and go, they do not form lasting friendships. Tragically, the experienced children do not even seek to form friendships, knowing that there is no point.

“‘It’s the rules!’ he snapped. ‘They cage the animals at night! It’s the rules.’” 

Mark scolds Jennings for not intuitively understanding the rules of the home. All of Mark’s rules relate to something comforting, like friends or stuffed animals, being taken away. These children live through constant abandonment and isolation, and the rules represent one symbol through which this theme is developed.

“I watched Mark and the kid playing. I didn’t know why Mark didn’t want to play with me. Maybe he was mad at me from this morning. When he explained to me about Doggie.” 

For no obvious reason, Mark rejects Jennings on his second full day at the home. The incident parallels when Jennings’ mother abandoned him. Jennings is once again abandoned with no explanation, left to question what he did to cause it. Jennings is still innocent, not understanding the social complexities in the home, and being left in the dark leads to his continued sense of isolation.

“There was something different going on here. The sound was different. The kids in the schoolyard were noisier. These kids weren’t noisy enough to be playing. They’re not playing! They’re waiting, they’re not playing at all. Every kid in this yard was waiting for something. I was waiting for Mom. Other kids were waiting to be lent out. Others, like Mark, were waiting for the next click. I hated this place.” 

After Mark rejects Jennings’ offer to play, Jennings begins to realize the reality of each child in the home. He is outside of his normal environment, and each child in the home is also forsaken and discarded, waiting and going through the motions. There is little hope of finding emotional fulfillment in this type of home.

“I looked around the room, as I had done before. But this time I saw the kids. For the first time, I really saw them. They were eating in silence; their faces were drawn and blank. They weren’t frowning, but neither were they smiling. They weren’t anything at all. I moved my glass into a spot where I could look at my own face in the reflection. I was one of them.” 

The theme of abandonment and isolation is illustrated through the behavior of the children in the dining room. Not only are they not allowed to speak or smile, but they have lost the will to do so. The foster care system has left these children cold and broken by the virtue of its emotionless, bureaucratic structure.

“We don’t want to, Jennings, but we have to. You see, the animals that are given to us we have to take care of. If we didn’t cage them up in one place, we might lose them, they might get hurt or damaged. It’s not the best thing, but it’s the only way we have to take care of them.”

Sister Clair explains to Jennings why they must cage the stuffed animals at night—a metaphor for how they must lock up the orphaned and abandoned children in the home, even though it is unfortunate. Her explanation underscores the tragedy of these children: They have been left alone by circumstance and can only be taken care of in this way, locked up and devoid of a loving home.

“I looked over toward the window. I could see across the alleyway to another building. Some of the lights were lit. I thought about the barred windows at the Home of the Angels. I thought about Mark and about Larry. Both of them were unhappy and both of them were wishing they were someplace else.” 

Jennings realizes that happiness and comfort are relative as he thinks about his brother Larry and his friend Mark. While Larry is back home and presumably in a much better situation than Mark, he is unhappy, having had a better experience at Mrs. Keys’ house. This reflects the theme of the ephemerality of happiness and comfort, as different experiences can make one’s environment more or less comforting by comparison.

“As she spoke about the children, I thought back to the Home of the Angels and Mark. I knew what she was talking about. I wanted to tell Sister you didn’t need a war to find children like that, there were a whole bunch of them somewhere in Brooklyn.” 

When Sister Ann Charles, Jennings’ teacher, tells them that many children will be left without homes and families in Korea due to the Korean War, Jennings realizes that many children like that exist in Brooklyn. This only underscores the plight of these children and that people do not even realize that so many children live without families around them. 

“‘It must be icky living in a hospital,’ I said.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said, ‘It’s all right.’

‘Oh I thought you’d hate it. I hated the homes I was in.’ […]

‘I lived in the hospital. It’s the only place I ever lived. I might hate living here.’” 

When Jerome is at his family’s house for the first time, it does not feel like home because he has in a hospital his entire life. The concept of home is relative based on one’s experiences and emotions.

“Oh gosh, Sal! I won’t be taking his bus anymore. I won’t get to see him or talk to him. Oh, gosh. First Midnight and then Mom, and now Doggie and Sal. I wonder why everyone I love always has to go away from me. I turned my face into the pillow.” 

With little explanation and no chance to say goodbye, Jennings is sent to live with the Fraziers. Reflecting the theme of abandonment, Jennings laments the loss of Doggie and Sal, two of many losses in his life. Burch uses an innocent child’s voice here to highlight how tragic this is to a young child who cannot understand the reason for these losses.

“He’s my friend. Ever since the Home of the Angels, when I first got Doggie, I haven’t been able to think of him any other way but my friend. I promised Sister Clair I’d always love him and take care of him. I will. He’s one of those special animals, you know. The kind Sister Clair never wanted to find lying by the wayside.” 

Jennings introduces Doggie to the statue of St. Michael in the St. Michael’s school church. The fact that Jennings has cared for Doggie all this time despite moving from one unstable place to another reflects that he is different than those who have taken care of him. Rather, he cares for someone and provides a stable home, even if only for a stuffed animal at his young age. Doggie is Jennings’ only source of stable comfort.

“I saw Sal after school every day. I could only be with him for about five minutes. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. […] It was good to share stories with Sal; he understood everything I was saying and everything I was feeling. He remembered what it was like to be alone.”

Making friends with Sal, a person who finally understands Jennings, marks an important change in Jennings’ development. Sal’s wisdom and friendship help Jennings cope with the instability and unpredictability of his life, having been through it himself. Sal also acts as a father figure to Jennings, even referring to Jennings as his son.

“‘You’ve had some hard and troubled times for such a little boy,’ she whispered. ‘I wants you always to know, you gots someone here who loves you. If’n you ever find yourself alone or in trouble...you jist get yourself back to Martha. I’ll always be here for you.’” 

Though Martha and Sal are not Jennings’ guardians, they understand him and care for him as if they were his surrogate parents. However, in this moment, Jennings must leave Martha behind—yet another example of how he loses everyone he loves.

“I said once I wouldn’t mind living with Mrs. Keys, and you couldn’t understand that. Now that you’ve lived with someone nice, it’s different. Isn’t it? It’s not so hard to think of living someplace else. Someplace where you’re not hungry all the time and not treated like a dog.” 

When Jennings returns with good stories about the Fraziers, Larry reminds him why he said he would not mind living with Mrs. Keys. This exchange again reflects the theme that home is relative, and that depending on one’s experiences, one may change their concept of where their home is and what they want in a home. The fact that Jennings lived in comfort and security and that he even had a surrogate father and mother in Sal and Martha, forces both Jennings and the reader to consider that he may have been better off there.

“In the days and weeks that followed, I saw a very different family. Nobody talked to anyone. Everyone seemed to be angry with everyone else. I couldn’t understand what had happened.”

After his positive experience with the Fraziers, Jennings begins to see his home and his family differently. His family is unhappy and fights constantly. After all the terrible times in the homes, his family seemed better, but now they seem to be unraveling.

“‘It ain’t no good liking people,’ he said. He climbed back into his bunk. ‘I thought you would’ve learned that by now. […] You get to like someone, and puff! They’re gone. It ain’t no good liking anybody.’” 

Larry scolds Jennings for crying because he can no longer see Sal. The constant process of abandonment and heartbreak has broken Larry’s will to connect with others, just as it had with Mark at the Home of the Angels. Jennings, in contrast, has not been emotionally broken. He has willfully made friends and emotional connections despite Mark’s and Larry’s warnings. Therefore, Jennings eventually overcomes his hardships and raises a healthy family as an adult, as revealed in the Prologue and Epilogue.

“Of course it does. And the more it hurts the more you know just how special they were to you. If you never liked anyone because you were afraid they’d go away, you’d never know the joy of friendship. You would always be alone.” 

Sal convinces Jennings that Larry was wrong, that if one never makes friends or connects with anyone, then one is even more alone. Sal’s emotional support keeps Jennings from becoming bitter and disconnecting completely, or from making poor decisions like Larry and George.

“The yard was made of the same wire-mesh fence, only this fence had barbed wire running all across the top. It frightened me. For the first time, I felt as though I were a prisoner. I kept staring at the barbed wire.” 

Here Jennings’ description of the barbed wire fence is a stark symbol of the harsh reality of these homes. The barbed wire fence and barred windows mark a clear parallel to prison, and the children are treated like prisoners. Much like prison, these children have little hope for their future, as they are not allowed to develop within normal society.

“‘Until now,’ he broke the silence, ‘the only present I ever got was the angel you gave me.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Now I got a brother and a last name.’” 

The fact that Mark kept the angel cutout that Jennings gave him highlights just how impactful Jennings’ compassion is in Mark’s life. The pathos created by Mark and Jennings’ friendship also serves to make Mark’s imminent death more tragic and emotional for the reader. This is also one more example of a close loved one leaving Jennings’ life, further testing his resolve to persevere through these many hardships alone.

“‘Education is the most important thing you can have,’ he said. […] ‘If you have that, it’s yours. Nobody can take it away. You can make a place for yourself, and nobody can hurt you.’” 

Returning from the Brooklyn Shelter, Walter tells Jennings that George, Larry, and their father are all drunks, and that they’ve destroyed their futures by abandoning their education. This is the first instance in which someone has told Jennings a concrete way in which he can actually secure himself and his future. If he makes sure to complete his education, he can make his own way and his own life. Walter believes that education is something that nobody can ever take away, a critical point for Jennings, who has had almost everything taken away from him.

“Stacy had a way of making everything seem wonderful. If I could say ‘I love you’ to anyone, I thought, it would be to Stacy. So many times I came close to finding the words. And just as many times I swallowed them. Someday I’ll say it, I thought. I know I will.” 

As Jennings grows up, his first love is a major step in his development to maturing and overcoming his childhood innocence and suffering. Stacy brings him a sense of happiness and fulfillment that he has been denied his entire childhood. She also represents a vision of a new possibility and a new future in his life, one in which he is more mature and making his own future, as Walter and Jerome have advised him.

“He got to his feet and looked at me. […] I wanted to hug him, but I didn’t. He blinked his eyes and turned around. He started to walk away. I watched him as he walked toward a group of kids. He turned twice to look back at me. I waved my hand for him to keep going. He shuffled along in his baggy pants over to the kids. Kevin was going to make it, I thought.” 

Jennings has matured and is now practiced enough in these homes to take care of another child, Kevin, who reminds Jennings of himself at the Home of the Angels. Jennings adapts Mark’s rules to teach Kevin how to survive in this type of place, but unlike Mark, Jennings adopts a more parental role, making sure Kevin is taken care of.