63 pages • 2 hours read
Jennings Michael BurchThey Cage the Animals at Night
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1984A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Doggie
After Jennings is nine years old, his brothers begin to question why he still carries around a stuffed animal, Doggie, because they do not understand how integral Doggie is to him as a symbol of comfort and security. Doggie’s constant presence is the only source of stability that Jennings has throughout his years passing in and out of the foster care system. When Jennings’ tragic circumstances coldly refuse him any stable care or positive environment, he is forced to make one for himself with Doggie.
Jennings’ constant care for Doggie demonstrates that he can care for something in a way that no one has ever cared for him. He breaks the cycle of abandonment and instability that he has been forced to live with throughout his childhood. This is how he survives the hardships of the homes and eventually raises a family of his own as an adult. It is striking that, despite moving from home to home, running away, getting lost, and getting caught by the police twice, he never loses or abandons Doggie.
Prisons and Zoos
Jennings makes deliberate note of the bars or wire mesh in the windows at the homes in which he stays. When he arrives at the Brooklyn Shelter, he stares at the barbed wire fence enclosing the children inside. Burch intentionally underscores these elements of the setting to strike a parallel with the setting of a prison. All of these motifs, including the cold white tile and metal beds, mirror the environment of a prison. Jennings directly tells his brother Walter once, “It’s a prison” (218). Such symbolism demonstrates that these homes are not caring environments; the children are merely locked up and not nourished.
Burch also uses a zoo motif to describe the homes. The title of the book reflects a metaphor for the children as animals who are caged up at night. Sister Clair uses this metaphor in Chapter 4, comparing the stuffed animals to the children, arguing that, while tragic, it is more important to keep the animals (i.e., children) locked up but safe than to allow them to be hurt outside of the fences and bars of the homes. The title of the book is meant to highlight this metaphor, that children in foster care are treated more as animals to be kept than as young people that must be cared for and loved.
The Rules
Jennings learns several rules that reflect the isolation of children in foster care and the heartlessness of the homes where they live. Some of the rules of the homes are organizational, directing the children to line up and go to certain rooms or do certain activities when ordered. Jennings’ friend Mark also teaches him unspoken rules, what he calls “kid’s rule[s]”: Rule number one is not to make friends because it is painful when they leave. As a rule, the nuns cage the animals at night, that is, they take back and lock up the stuffed animals at night. All the “rules” of the home are related to isolation and abandonment. Nothing warm or comforting is permanent. The children create their own rules to protect their feelings; if they isolate themselves, they believe they won’t get hurt later.
At Jennings’ final home in Yonkers, he meets Kevin, a boy who reminds Jennings of himself during his first experience with the foster care system. He repeats Mark’s rule number one to Kevin—that you cannot make friends—because he wants to protect Kevin. He knows that Kevin is a “lifer,” and that the only way he is going to survive in these homes is if he learns to put up a protective shell, to keep out his emotions to avoid unbearable pain.
