Seasons

Seasons are all about change and transition. You don't just go straight from having summer barbeques to building snowmen. Unless you're that Olaf guy from Frozen, we guess.

Anyway, when the novel starts, it's fall. You might be thinking of apple picking or pumpkin carving, but folks, this is a darker story. Start thinking about mental institutions.

That's right. This story opens with the Blau family driving to a mental hospital to drop off Deborah, who has recently tried to kill herself.

Cheery.

Fall is generally associated with the harvest. It's when everything is at its peak but also very close to death or cyclical change. Deborah has come very close to ending her own life because she's been losing her grip on her sanity. Her parents are also losing their grip on her. Everything seems to be slipping away, so, yeah, we think it's pretty appropriate that all of this is happening right in the middle of fall.

Spring is the opposite of fall, and it makes an appearance in the novel in the novel, too. Spring is all about rebirth. It's about plants coming back to life after being dead all winter. It's exciting and vibrant and happy—the opposite of what many patients in the mental hospital feel, unfortunately. In fact, when spring comes, its presence seems to be sticking its tongue out at the patients:

Although those in the mental hospital wondered how springtime could come in spite of their particular pain, it came and was triumphant. It made the patients on D ward angry that the world which had murdered them did not suffer for its sins, but, on the contrary seemed to be thriving. And when Doris Rivera tied up her hair, put on a suit and a shallow smile, and left again for the world, it seemed to many as if she were in league with the springtime against them. (18.15)

Doris Rivera has been reborn, in a way. She was a former patient at the hospital, she is readmitted for a lapse in mental health, and then she goes back into the world to start anew. She gets her springtime, so to speak, after that long winter.

The patients, on the other hand, feel like the world "murdered" them but didn't "suffer for its sins." That's a pretty heavy description. It plays around with the same kind of language usually reserved for talking about Jesus Christ dying for people's sins. Jesus's death and resurrection are celebrated by Christians in the springtime during Easter.

But the mental patients don't feel like they have anything to celebrate. They have no egg hunts, and most of them don't believe in religion.

But they believed in Doris.

Doris Rivera's case is like a reverse resurrection. The savior of the mental hospital went out into the world, but then she came back broken. There's no rebirth here—just a reminder of how harsh the world is.

Except that then Doris goes back out into the world again. The D ward patients think this is nuts; they feel like they're watching her get set up to fail again. But the lesson here is that there isn't one death and rebirth for these patients: life is a continual cycle of death and rebirth, just like the seasons are.

Now, some of the patients, like Deborah and Carla, will move on from their self-pity and embrace that cycle. It's fitting that when Deborah finally takes her GED and passes with flying colors, it's springtime. This time, though, Deborah isn't feeling sorry for herself. "She pursued her studies…followed the season of budding fruit trees…fell in love with poplar trees... At the end of the month the Regents of the State called her out of the springtime to open their letter" (29.76-77).

That letter delivers her results—and the results that are so good she can go to college if she wants. She can start her life over and be in the world and have choices. She finally gets to experience the joy of the seasons and not feel like they're mocking her. She's part of the world now, and part of its cycles of death and rebirth.