White Angel

“I was, thanks to Carlton, the most criminally advanced nine-year-old in my fourth-grade class.”

Carlton is 16 and experimenting with drugs, sex, and alcohol. Bobby is nine years old at the time of the story, but Carlton nevertheless brings him along on his adventures. This sentence demonstrates how Cunningham uses humor to establish character; the phrase “criminally advanced nine-year-old” is absurd, but it demonstrates the dangerous freedom that Carlton wants to instill in his brother. Such sentences establish the narrator’s wry tone, but also reveal his relationship with his brother, who lovingly includes him in his risk-taking activities, naively thinking there is nothing to fear.

“Here is Carlton several months before his death, in an hour so alive with snow that earth and sky are identically white.”

Bobby reveals that Carlton will be dead in a few months, but he doesn’t reveal how his brother will die. Here, the hour is “alive with snow,” and this figurative language accomplishes several things: It suggests the complete white-out of the snow and sky, and it highlights the contrast between the hour’s “aliveness” with Carlton’s imminent death. Snow is seldom associated with vivacity—it is more often linked to stasis or silence. The phrase “alive with snow” seems to contain a contradiction, just like the story contains two versions of Carlton: the present Carlton (“Here is Carlton”) who is alive, and the future Carlton who the reader knows is dead.

“There is a different country for us to live in. I am already a new person, renamed Frisco. My old name was Robert.”

Right as the acid is starting to have an effect on Bobby when the boys are in the graveyard, Bobby reflects on the nickname Frisco, which he plans to use when they go to Woodstock and join the movement. These declarative sentences reveal Bobby’s absolute confidence in Carlton and in the world Carlton promises him. This confidence evinces Carlton’s influence on Bobby’s identity; Bobby believes “I am already a new person” because he believes in Carlton.

“There’s not a thing in this pretty world to be afraid of. I’m here.”

Carlton says this to Bobby, and it illustrates their close relationship as well as Carlton’s worldview. Carlton is an optimist and an idealist—he believes the world is “pretty” just as he believes in Woodstock and the utopic future associated with the hippie movement. Bobby believes in Carlton and is strongly influenced by his personality and vision; if Carlton tells him not to be afraid, he feels safe.

“The secret of flight is this—you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws. I swear it to this day.”

This moment at the window when the boys “fly” is almost surreal. Bobby never fully specifies what he means by “flight,” though it seems related to the drugs’ effects. Even when the drugs have worn off, “to this day” Bobby will swear he knows the secret of flight. This quote reflects Bobby’s intense and enduring love for Carlton, as well as Bobby’s belief in him. The freedom he feels in this moment, outsmarting the body so it doesn’t know it’s “defying the laws,” speaks also to the intense optimism of youth; Carlton taught him to believe in miracles.

“Our father bends to his work under a hooded lightbulb, preparing the long box into which he will lay clockworks, pendulum, a face. A plane drones by overhead, invisible in the clouds.”

This quotation highlights the symbolism of the grandfather clock. The clock is described as a “long box” into which “a face” will lay. The language evokes an image of a coffin. The clock is not only the father’s project but a symbol of death. Bobby soon notices the drone of an invisible plane flying overhead, which juxtaposes flight imagery with the imagery of the coffin-like clock. The narrative often juxtaposes imagery of flight with imagery of death, implying that these ideas operate in parallel.

“Her nerves run through the house. She can feel dust settling on the tabletops, milk starting to turn in the refrigerator.”

This quotation exemplifies Cunningham’s use of figurative language to convey emotion. Bobby’s mother is full of tension. She is worried about Carlton’s criminal and risk-taking behavior, and she is also sensitive to her responsibility within the house. She later snaps when Carlton tracks mud in the house. Her nerves are part of the wiring of the house itself, implying how her emotional life is linked to what happens inside it. She cannot literally “feel” dust settling or milk going bad, but this figurative language demonstrates the close link between her emotions and the details of her domestic life.

“I am about to ask, as casually as I can manage, about the relationship between love and bodily pain, when our mother’s voice cuts across the room.”

The link between love and pain is a theme that runs throughout the story. Bobby wants to ask his brother about the link because he doesn’t understand the look on Carlton’s face when Carlton was having sex, but this unasked question still lingers over the story. The narrative explores the relationship between love and pain, and the question of whether pain always follows love because we can lose the people we love. For Bobby, love is followed by the great pain of loss.

“He has arranged a blind date between our parents’ friends and his own. It’s a Woodstock move—he is plotting a future in which young and old have business together.”

This quotation illuminates Carlton’s character and his motivations. Inspired by Woodstock’s vision of peace and love, Carlton wants to bring the generations together for a “blind date.” He wants a world in which “young and old have business together” and are not in opposition, as they often were in the volatile 1960s. When Carlton dies at the party, the possibility of more nights like this vanishes.

“The future shines for everyone, rich with the possibility of more nights exactly like this. Even our father is pressed into dancing, which he does like a flightless bird, all flapping arms and potbelly.”

When Carlton’s friends join the party, they unexpectedly improve the atmosphere and make the adults loosen up and dance. This new mood creates a feeling of possibility, as if there could be “more nights exactly like this” when different generations come together in pursuit of fun and self-knowledge. Even Bobby’s father is transformed, although his dancing is ungainly and he appears as a “flightless bird.” This phrase is part of the flight imagery throughout the story. Unlike Bobby, who compares himself to a sparrow, his father is unable to fly; his age and his disappointments have weighed him down.

“He has joined the adults. He has made himself bigger and taken size from me. As the Doors thump ‘Strange Days,’ I hope something awful happens to him. I say so to myself.”

When Bobby feels his brother has “joined the adults,” he fears that Carlton has abandoned their brotherly closeness for adult responsibilities. He also feels jealous of Carlton’s girlfriend, who he believes has stolen his brother. Bobby’s us-versus-them mentality directly contrasts with Carlton’s vision, as Carlton dreams of generational unity. This is because Bobby is only nine and is only able to think in such dichotomies. However, the feeling Bobby expresses here will haunt him. Angry at Carlton for what he perceives as a betrayal, Bobby wishes misfortune on his brother—and only a short time later, Carlton dies.

“Our mother has established her life of separateness behind the guest-room door. Our father mutters his greetings to the door as he passes.”

Grief separates the family from each other. Bobby’s mother, overwhelmed by Carlton’s death, establishes a new life of “separateness” behind the guestroom door, as if she chooses now to be a guest in her own home, alienated from it by her grief. Bobby’s father merely accepts this change and greets the door as he passes. Both characters are isolated by their pain, neither able to help the other. Bobby still describes her as “our” mother, even though Carlton has passed; Bobby holds on to Carlton, whose presence in the family lingers.

“The small gray finger of Carlton’s stone pokes up among the others, within sight of the angel’s blank white eyes. Above us, airplanes and satellites sparkle. People are flying even now toward New York or California, to take up lives of risk and invention.”

Bobby reflects on the fact that life, and risk, continue, even after Carlton’s death. Cunningham draws together the theme of arrested flight, with Carlton as the stationary white angel in contrast to the planes flying freely overhead. The angel’s eyes are blank and empty. Carlton’s grave stands up like a “gray finger,” a phrasing that is almost pitiful—as if it wants to be noticed. This symbolism and imagery convey the sadness of the narrator and the theme of grief, and how it devastates a family.