Character Analysis
Malcolm has the most serious predicament of any character in The Sixth Sense, since, you know, he's dead. And doesn't even know it.
But for 90% of the film, we're encouraged to think that Cole is the one with the problem, a child whose demons (literally) are preventing him from living a normal, happy life. Dead people show up in Cole's bedroom, follow him down the street, hang from rafters in his school, try to give him psychotherapy...you get the drift. Really, you should be expecting this just from knowing his name: Seer.
Like seer? Totally not an accident, if you ask us.
Cole lives his life in a constant state of anxiety and terror about the dead people who appear to him. All the time. And he's afraid to tell his mom about it for fear she'll think he's a freak.
He's isolated, terrified, and friendless.
Malcolm spends most of the film believing that he's been hired as Cole's therapist to help him with his school and family conflicts. But we eventually learn that things aren't as they seem, and Cole's not just some lost boy with behavioral issues.
School of Hard Knocks
One of the first things we learn about Cole: he's not popular at school. At first, we think he might be, when we see a kid named Tommy pick Cole up on his way to school and even throw an arm around him as they walk away from the house.
But it's just an act. Tommy is just pretending to be nice to Cole while the parental units are watching, and he really enjoys teasing and torturing Cole when…they're not.
When Cole and Malcolm first meet, Cole explains to Malcolm why he goes along with Tommy's "best friends" act and doesn't tell his mother the truth about his friendships:
COLE: I don't tell her things.
MALCOLM: Why not?
COLE: Because she doesn't look at me like everybody else, and I don't want her to. I don't want her to know.
MALCOLM: Know what?
COLE: That I'm a freak.
Poor kid is willing to subject himself to some serious abuse to avoid upsetting his mother. And of all his fears—and he's got plenty—losing his mother's affections is pretty high on the list.
Love Me Like a Rock
Cole wants nothing more than to connect with his mom, but he's afraid to tell her what's really going on with him. He crawls into her bed on a particularly scary night, but won't tell her why.
Basically, Cole is looking for reassurance that his mom hasn't joined his school friends in writing him off as a weirdo. For example, when she finds that all the kitchen cupboards have somehow blown open in the 15 seconds it took for her to leave and return to the room, Cole's terrified that she's going to assume something is off or "bad" about him:
COLE: What are you thinking, Mama?
LYNN: Lots of things.
COLE: Anything bad about me?
LYNN: Hey, look at my face. I was not thinking something bad about you. Got it?
COLE: Got it.
Lynn loves Cole desperately, no question about it, but she does get frustrated and confused by Cole's behavior—and he can sense that.
Example: there's the case of the missing bumblebee pendant, which Lynn inherited from her deceased mother. The pin keeps mysteriously migrating into Cole's room, and Cole refuses to take responsibility for moving it. Of course, the ghost of Lynn's mother is the one responsible, but Cole can't tell his mother that. He keeps quiet, and Lynn continues to think that Cole has been stealing and not admitting to it.
That's the kind of stuff that puts up huge barriers between mother and son. He doesn't want to lie and say he has been taking it, but he's totally not prepared to tell her the real reasons behind strange happenings like that one.
It's a very lonely life for our boy.
Anger Management
Cole comes off as a victim pretty much across the board. He's young, cute, slight of stature, and continuously terrorized by ghosts (as well as his mini-Neanderthal peers at school). Mostly, Cole just resigns himself to the problems and doesn't complain or act up. But every once in a while, he does lose his temper and fight back. The kid is under incredible pressure, and he's gotta blow at some point.
For example, when Cole doesn't like the kind of funny look the teacher is giving him one day, he uses some intel gleaned from the spirit world to go on the attack. Cole reveals to everyone that the teacher used to have a stuttering problem, and calls him by his childhood nickname "Stuttering Stanley" over and over again:
COLE: I don't like people looking at me like that.
STANLEY: Like what?
COLE: Stop it!
MR. CUNNINGHAM: I don't know how else to look.
COLE: You're Stuttering Stanley!
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Excuse me?
COLE: You talked funny when you went to school here. You talked funny all the way to high school.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: What?
COLE: You shouldn't look at people. It makes them feel bad.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: How did you...
COLE: Stop looking at me!
Of course, Stanley ends up losing his cool, and Cole ends up…in trouble.
We understand where Stanley is coming from and all, but we feel bad for Cole, too. Imagine being constantly barraged with information from dead people. "Oh, hey Cole, we know you're trying to focus on history class, but guess what they used to do here? They had executions. Wanna see some?" We'd be a little on edge, too.
We don't even like being interrupted by live humans.
Malcolm in the Middle
Luckily, Malcolm comes along and teaches Cole how to manage the whole sitch so the ghosts get less scary, which allows the kid to start living a more normal life. And by "normal," we mean still seriously unusual. When Cole starts viewing the ghosts as people in need rather than attackers, it's a whole new ballgame.
By the end of the film, Cole's life has completely changed. He's starring in the school play, clearly getting along better with his schoolmates, and finally being honest with his mom about how he's different from other boys.
The therapizing doesn't just go one-way between Malcolm and Cole, by the way. With his gentle references to the dead people walking around who have zero idea that they are dead, Cole gives Malcolm everything he needs to realize—when he's ready—that he's one of them.
Brave Heart
We never find out why Cole has this gift. Which, by the way, he doesn't think of as a gift—more like a curse.
It seems like an act of superhuman courage for him to take Malcolm's advice and start listening to the shot, hanged, sliced, and puking dead people who show up in his life; to do what they ask even though he doesn't know why he's the designated ghost-whisperer.
But think about it: Cole's doing that even before Malcolm's suggests it.
With whom? Malcolm.
Here's this dead guy who doesn't know he's dead, showing up and thinking he can help Cole with his problems. Maybe Cole senses Malcolm can help him; for whatever reason, he sticks around.
Once you've seen the movie the first time and go back to watch it again, you can see that Cole's initial reaction to Malcolm—an intense wariness—is a lot more than typical skepticism about therapy. He's looking at a dead guy, and although we don't see a bloody, wounded Malcolm, Cole sure does. That's how all the dead appear to him. Again, he still doesn't run away from Malcolm.
That's gutsy, in our book.
It's a statement about the emotional complexity of this film that seeing dead people isn't the most important thing about Cole. Viewers respond just as much, if not more, to Cole's loneliness and fear than to his sixth sense. He's a sad, scared little boy who wants his mom to love him and worries that she doesn't. He's frightened to death of his world, and we root for him like crazy when he overcomes those fears and gets his young life back.
As you may have already sussed out, the patient (Cole) ends up being the therapist—not just for Malcolm, but also (apparently) for the entire spirit population of southeastern Pennsylvania.
Let's give the kid an honorary Ph.D.
Cole Sear's Timeline