David Small

Character Analysis

All the Things a Cough Can Mean

Have you ever met a kid who subconsciously one-ups his mom's ear, nose, and throat issues? No? Well, meet David. The first thing he tells us when introducing us to his cold, distant mother is that she "had her little cough" (1.18). Instead of suffering from a scratchy throat, though, this is part of her limited repertoire for communication. David's family, you see, isn't much for conversation.

Everyone else in his family is too messed up to communicate effectively, so David "learned a way of expressing myself wordlessly […] Getting sick. That was my language" (1.30; 1.37). 

It's not like his mom suddenly becomes a loving nurturer when he has sinus problems, but she does at least bring him a glass of water and a teddy bear, which is way more affection than he gets when he's well. Illness is how David asks for what he needs.

Unfortunately, using his sinus problems as a means of communication backfires big time. He patiently submits to the X-ray treatments his dad thinks will cure him, but in fact, they make everything worse. The figurative lack of voice of his childhood leads to the literal lack of voice of his adolescence.

Not, In Fact, the Best Years of Your Life

You know those adults who try to tell you that your teen years are the best years of your life? Yeah, they're wrong. David's adolescence is pretty darn grim, and the fact that his throat surgery renders him unable to speak makes things even worse. Social life? What social life? As David tells us, "When you have no voice, you don't exist" (3.206). Yikes.

Adolescence is when everything comes to a head for David. He loses a vocal cord at fourteen, and by sixteen he's out of the house for good. In the interim, his parents don't tell him he had cancer, girls don't notice him because he can't speak, he finds out his mom is living a secret gay life, he gets sent away to a truly heinous boarding school, and then his dad drops the final bombshell: The X-ray treatments to which he subjected his son did cause David's cancer.

The one saving grace of David's teen years is that he has a truly kick-butt therapist. Nobody has ever been honest with this kid in his life, but his therapist gives it to him straight. He tells David his mom doesn't love him, and then he steps in as a kind of surrogate parent. (It's not as messed up as it sounds—it's actually a positive thing.) When his therapist praises his artwork, David finally has some hope that his talent can get him out of his house and out of Detroit. Fortunately, it does.

That's What I'm Talkin' About

You know by now that David became a famous artist. He's talented and he practiced a lot, which is the recipe for success. But there was way more at stake for David than artistic acclaim. He tells us:

Art became my home. Not only did it give me back my voice, but art has given me everything I have wanted or needed since. (4.158)

When we first meet David, he's a child lying in the floor, drawing with crayons; by the end of the book, he's an art professor. But in between, he draws a lot of pictures that save him. From the imaginary cartoon friends that keep him company as a child, to the brick walls and closed doors that represent his isolation as a teen, to the National Book Award-nominated memoir you're now reading, art is David's voice. It's his best friend, it's how he narrates his experience on the planet, and it's how he lets us know that even when your voice is crushed, there's a way to find it again.