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.
Themes
“Home” Is Relative
“Home” is a complex concept for Jennings and other children in foster care who come and go from place to place. While Jennings does not spend all his time in children’s homes, he also has an unstable, dysfunctional family life outside of these homes. Because of this pervasive instability and unpredictability, Jennings does not have a dependable environment or even a family that can be defined as his “home.”
When Jennings first meets his brother Jerome, Jerome comments that the hospital is the only home he has ever known, and that he might hate living with his family, which would normally be considered his true “home.” Jerome’s definition of “home” is based on his experiences and circumstances, and so for him, his home is less with his family than it is at the hospital. Larry serves as another example: He is upset to be home with his family after his first stay with another family and in a home. He has a better time staying with Mrs. Keys, therefore he redefines his concept of “home” based on his contextual experiences. Years later, he becomes so frustrated with his family that he runs away; he begins drinking to cope with the fact that he does not feel at home in his house anymore, and he rejects it.
Through these examples, Burch develops the idea that home is a relative construct depending on one’s experience. This idea is also developed in the way that Jennings creates surrogate homes and families wherever he finds himself. For example, he befriends Sal, who becomes a paternal figure to him, and Jennings cares for him as much as he would a real father. At the Frazier’s house, he attaches himself to Martha, who cares for him as a mother, even referring to him as “my baby” (157). Doggie is the most pervasive example of how Jennings constructs his own stable home construct, even as he is moved around and his environment changes. He always has Doggie to talk to and bond with, becoming his surrogate family in his most isolated and challenging moments. Other such contextually-created homes come and go, such as the Daily family, who becomes his surrogate family and his surrogate home in Chapter 15. All these instances reflect the idea that “home” is a construct created by individuals, and that it is relative and based on circumstance.
The Abandonment and Isolation of Children
When Jennings is a child, his mother drops him off at a children’s home without explaining why she is suddenly abandoning him, or when he will return home. Adults and Jennings’ older brothers frequently conceal information from Jennings that only serves to confuse and isolate him: For example, Jennings’ school principal informs him that he will begin living with a stranger, Mr. Frazier, and Jennings does not have the chance to see his mother or ask why this is happening.
This theme is effectively highlighted by Burch’s decision to write in a child’s voice, providing the reader with no more information than young Jennings knows at the time. With this creative choice, Burch forces the reader to experience Jennings’ confusion, isolation, and insecurity by providing no explanations for what is happening to him. For instance, when Jennings is dropped off at the Home of the Angels and realizes he is not going home soon, he wonders “what bad thing I did for Mom to leave me here” (12). By blaming himself for being abandoned at a home, Burch creates a sense of tragedy, emotional pathos, and sympathetic response in the reader. The reader can surmise that Jennings did not do anything wrong, but Jennings does not realize this.
The few kind people in Jennings’ life also abandon him, leaving him feeling isolated and alone. One of the first instances is when Sister Clair, the only nun who is kind to him, is transferred away from the Home of the Angels. Later, Jennings’ teacher Sister Ann Charles leaves for Korea to take care of homeless children, even though there are many homeless children in New York. As the story progresses, he occasionally lists through this series of abandonments. For example, “First Midnight and then Mom, and now Doggie and Sal. I wonder why everyone I love always has to go away from me” (141). Sometimes Jennings is forced to abandon those he loves, such as when he has to stop taking Sal’s bus when he moves in with the Fraziers. All of these experiences take a heavy toll on Jennings’ emotional development.
The Ephemerality of Happiness and Comfort for Children in Foster Care
The ephemerality of a comforting environment, friendship, or any other source of happiness is a stark reality in the lives of children in foster care. On Jennings’ second day, Mark somberly advises Jennings not to make friends, because he has learned through experience that friends eventually are ripped away: They are either lent out to foster families, they go home, or they end up in other homes. Mark knows that comfort and happiness are fleeting, the pain of which is too difficult to bear.
This constant cycle of emotional bonding, abandonment, isolation, and pain scars these children, leaving them emotionally broken and cold. In the dining room at the Home of the Angels, Jennings notices that the children neither frown nor smile, that they “weren’t anything at all” (29). In the yard, he realizes that the children are not really playing so much as they are waiting—to go home, to be sent away, or for the next command from their caretakers. This theme is a constant reminder to the reader that the American foster care system, at least in the 1940s and 1950s, is broken, and that it only serves to emotionally damage these children in irreparable ways.
Jennings overcomes this dynamic by his sheer will and initial ignorance of this cycle. He convinces Mark, despite the rules, to be his friend, and he makes friends with other children at other homes as well, such as Butch, Stevie, and Ronny. His will to make the best of his time in these homes has a positive effect on such children, giving them moments of comfort and happiness where they have never had them before. Yet even Jennings advises Kevin at his last home not to make friends, echoing Mark’s rule from before, because he cares enough to want Kevin to survive. Jennings knows that, despite his efforts to create a positive environment, the cold structure of the homes is too much to fight against in the end.
