Absolutely Normal Chaos

Seventeen-year-old Carl Ray Finney was raised as the oldest child of seven on Aunt Radene and Uncle Carl Joe’s farm in West Virginia. When his mother tells him that Carl Joe is not his biological father, he comes to Easton finds Charlie Furtz. As the truth of Carl Ray’s parentage is kept secret from both the West Virginia and Easton Finneys, Carl Ray’s reasons for coming to Easton seem vague and suspicious to Mary Lou and her siblings, who upend their routines to accommodate him.

Readers see Carl Ray through Mary Lou’s eyes, and at the start of the novel he is presented as an antagonist. He is a “disappointment” to Mary Lou for not living up to the potential excitement of an estranged visitor (16). He is quiet and uncommunicative, and he possesses inconvenient habits such as staying in his room until midday, forcing Mary Lou to postpone her own plans (16). His vagueness is communicated in the repetition of the speech tic, “don’t rightly know” (20). Carl Ray is one of the few characters in the novel who is physically described, and to Mary Lou, “he looks like he’s sort of anemic or something” given his extreme pallor, height, and slenderness (16). Mary Lou’s description of his head looking “like a miniature of a real person’s head” indicates how she views him as an alien—someone to judge and keep out (16). Mary Lou even views his stay at their house, where he has his own room and can have as many helpings of food as he likes, as an alien takeover. Rather than adding excitement to her summer, Carl Ray has made it more difficult by exacerbating tensions already present in the Finney household.

Carl Ray is also obsessed with The Odyssey, a book he knows by heart and can reflect on as though it is his own personal journey. The Odyssey connects him to Mary Lou, who is also reading the book and making a journey of self-discovery.

Carl Ray’s saga to find his father is a type of Odyssey. He endures tribulations such as the shock of finding out about his parentage, his biological father’s death, and his own near death from the car he bought with his inheritance. Ultimately, he comes to the realization that home is in West Virginia with the father who raised him.

Thirteen-year-old Beth Ann Bartels is Mary Lou’s best friend and the youngest in a two-child family. Mary Lou reflects that Beth Ann’s house “is […] always immaculately clean, as if someone had just raced through it with a duster and a vacuum cleaner or as if no one really lived there” (6). The orderly state of Beth Ann’s house reflects the greater level of control that Mary Lou perceives in her best friend’s life. For example, rather than being overlooked, Beth Ann has an older sister who shares her clothes with her and looks out for her well-being by setting her up on dates. Beth Ann tells Mary Lou “everything, even things I do not want to know,” and the pair spend a good portion of the summer together (5). However, Beth Ann who is eager to grow up, start dating, and be accepted by the popular girls, puts her loyalties to Mary Lou on the backburner, especially when she starts dating Derek. As a result, tension develops between Beth Ann and Mary Lou, and their dynamic shifts so they are more rivals than friends. They are willing and able to hurt each other, as Mary Lou feels left out when Beth Ann joins a club run by the popular girls and Beth Ann’s mouth turns down at the corners when Mary Lou neglects to be sufficiently impressed by her boyfriend.

Beth Ann is a foil to Mary Lou: She is girly and obsessed with appearances, where Mary Lou is a tomboy who craves authenticity. Although both girls have summer romances, their attitude to the throes of romance is different and shows their true character. For example, Beth Ann is so in love with the idea of love that she exaggerates her relationship with Derek; when he betrays her, she easily exchanges him for Carl Ray. To Beth Ann, having a boyfriend is more important than who the boyfriend is. In contrast, Creech shows Mary Lou to have a deeper character and steadier attachments, as the only boy she obsesses over is Alex. Mary Lou realizes Beth Ann’s superficiality and transfers her loyalty over to Carl Ray, especially when Beth Ann is put off about the truth of Carl Ray’s parentage and continues to entertain thoughts of Derek. Still, at the time of Carl Ray’s accident, Beth Ann shows real remorse for her selfishness and her inability to grasp the bigger picture of Carl Ray’s personal journey. This indicates that her character is redeemable.

Thirteen-year-old Alex Cheevey is an only child in a wealthy household comprised of his sweet but eccentric mother and his more formal father. Pink-cheeked, clean-looking Alex, who is Mary Lou’s love interest, “is certainly the best player on the basketball team and so graceful when he runs and dribbles the ball” (3). Alex has a typical teenage boy’s mannerisms, stuffing his hands into his pockets and speaking in monosyllables. His interest in Mary Lou is evident to the reader when he makes up excuses to hang around her neighborhood, even as he teases Mary Lou for being an overenthusiastic student. Their mutual nervousness and defensiveness delays their romantic coupling.

While Mary Lou judges Alex as not as intelligent as her, she is surprised to learn that he is ahead of her in reading The Odyssey and has opinions on it. Just as with Carl Ray, Mary Lou learns that there is more to people than initially meets the eye. As she gets to know Alex, she learns to appreciate the richness of his character.

Carl Ray’s biological father, Mr. Furtz is “sort of funny-looking, all freckly like Howdy Doody and nearly bald” with long thin arms and legs (32). He thus physically resembles Carl Ray, the son he conceived with Aunt Radene. Mr. Furtz only meets Carl Ray briefly before his death. Having experienced a premonition that he is close to death, Mr. Furtz wastes no time in leaving his firstborn an inheritance. Creech floats the idea that Mr. Furtz still pines over Aunt Radene; he explains to his wife that his ring is a souvenir from an old girlfriend, and he writes Aunt Radene a letter on the discovery that Carl Ray is his son. The idea of lost love and secret correspondence places an aura of romance over Carl Ray’s character and conception.

It takes Mary Lou, who dismisses Mr. Furtz as a regular father of three, a lot of time to figure out that he is the missing piece in Carl Ray’s saga. She is distracted by the shock of his loss, which proves the terrifying fact that death can visit those in good health. For Carl Ray, Mr. Furtz becomes the center of his existence for a while, as he leaves his family in West Virginia to seek out the man who will give meaning to his identity.

Mary Lou’s father Sam is a geologist and “a pretty regular father”, who oscillates between loving his kids and feeling that he cannot stand them (1). He hails from a large West Virginia family and is the recipient of Aunt Radene’s initial letter about Carl Ray. He seeks to avoid conflict by not over-questioning Carl Ray or interfering with his relationships.

Sam’s position as the head of the household in an old-fashioned patriarchal style is modeled by his having special chairs to sit on, both at the dining table and in the living room. His willingness to let Carl Ray take his living room seat indicates a temporary willingness to let go of authority in order to be congenial. He is also the one who disciplines and grounds Maggie when she is out later than she said would be. Mary Lou views her father as the hands-on type, remembering him holding out his hands to catch her vomit during a childhood sickness.

Mary Lou views her oral historian mother as “pretty regular” (2). Like Sam, she both delights and despairs at her children’s antics. As a working mother, she gives her children a lot of responsibility, ensuring that Maggie and Mary Lou take turns looking after their younger brothers while she is at work. With the prospect of Carl Ray’s visit, Sally is suddenly self-conscious that her home may be deficient, bending over backwards to give an impression of civility; for example. Mary Lou occasionally feels that her mother does not have time for her. However, they share moments of solidarity, such as when they laugh over Beth Ann’s mother allowing her to date 17-year-old Carl Ray.

Mary Lou’s 17-year-old sister Maggie is “your basic boy-crazy, fingernail-painting, mopey ole sister” who is obsessed with clothes, boys, and having an active social life (2). Maggie is more selfish than Mary Lou, as she is willing to break curfew and charm her way out of getting grounded with obsequiously good behavior and sweet-talk. Maggie juggles the demands of different men, appeasing her father so that he will allow her to go out, and satisfying her restless boyfriend Kenny, who does not hesitate to invite another girl to a party when Maggie is grounded.

While Mary Lou disdains her sister’s superficiality, Maggie is a chatty and likeable ally when she divulges the prosaic truth about the boy Beth Ann builds up as “Derek-the-Divine” (44). In turn, Mary Lou shares the book the precocious West Virginia cousins gave her about sex with Maggie, who is likely on the cusp of losing her virginity, is grateful.

Mary Lou describes her 12-year-old brother Dennis as “the kind of brother who will climb a tree with you one minute and tell on you the next” (2). A year younger that Mary Lou, Dennis is very much still a child, spending his time breaking windows and throwing eggs. He is embarrassed and left out by his sister’s burgeoning sexuality, and so he makes fun of her for it. Creech dissolves traditional gender boundaries in showing that Dennis is equally scared by snapping turtles and ghosts as Mary Lou is.

Skinny, eight-year-old Dougie, the self-referred “poor little slob”, is “quiet and more serious than the rest of us” (2). The family accommodates his eccentricity, acknowledging that he possesses virtues such as having a good memory. He is an example of a child who both gets lost and is supported in a large family.

The youngest Finney, four-year-old Tommy, is “the spoiled baby-type kid” who the rest of the family think is as “cute as anything” and “gets away with murder” (3). Tommy’s early preference for Carl Ray indicates a young child’s instinct for good character.

Sam’s brother Uncle Carl Joe lives in West Virginia with his wife Radene and their seven children. Their home is on a farm where there are outhouses, no electricity, and no telephone. He has countryside habits such as chewing tobacco, and he almost never leaves West Virginia. Unbeknownst to everyone else, when Uncle Carl Joe and Radene got married, she was pregnant with Mr. Furtz’s child. Uncle Carl Joe decided to raise and adopt the boy as his own.

When Aunt Radene told Carl Ray of his real paternity and Carl Ray goes on an odyssey to find his biological father, Uncle Carl Joe gets jealous. Carl Ray’s obstinacy in setting off on his quest clashes with Uncle Carl Joe’s insistence that a father is the one who takes care of a child as his own.

While Carl Ray physically resembles his biological father, his bears the marks of Uncle Carl Joe’s nurture, in their mutual stubbornness and habit of scaring people in the woods. While Carl Ray’s quest to find his biological father was necessary and has enriched his life, he eventually comes round to his adopted father’s point of view of fatherhood as nurture and protection.

Uncle Carl Joe and his seven-child clan are the hardy foil to the more timid and delicate Easton Finneys. Creech shows them to be close to the earth and unafraid of dark woods, cemeteries, and ghost stories. Although Mary Lou considers their way of life to be uncomfortably “primitive,” it has its own richness.

Aunt Radene is Uncle Carl Joe’s wife. Uncle Carl Joe met Aunt Radene at a New Year’s Eve party that has stuck in Mary Lou’s parents’ memories. At the time, Aunt Radene was dating Mr. Furtz and was unknowingly pregnant with his child. She was very attractive in her youth, and Mary Lou finds a photograph of her “wearing a halter top and very short shorts and high heels” (64). The idea that she has a secret is conveyed by her “leaning against a tree […] as if she is dreaming about something wonderful because she has this little smile on her face” (63). Here, Creech presents readers with the idea of Aunt Radene as her own person: a young woman capable of transferring her affections between Mr. Furtz and Uncle Carl Joe and bearing the secret of a pregnancy.

This snapshot contrasts with the matriarch shown in the novel. Although Aunt Radene is from Easton, she speaks with a rural West Virginia dialect and prepares enormous meals for her seven-child family. Still, she is the West Virginia Finneys’ chief correspondent, connecting them with the outside world. She writes letters and reads magazine articles about children having the right to know the truth of their parentage. Radene is torn between wanting to protect her husband’s feelings and supporting her son on his quest. The tension caused by these opposing forces make her tearful and faint. While Radene labors under the pressure of the secret, Carl Ray’s accident eventually forces her to confront the truth when she accepts the Furtzes’ hospitality.

Mr. Furtz’s wife, Mrs. Furtz enters the novel as an order-loving mother of three who has just moved to the Finneys’ neighborhood. She looks down on the Finney children for their boisterousness. However, after Mr. Furtz’s death, she becomes a grieving emotional wreck, and Mary Lou witnesses the extent to which life upheavals can cause a change of character. Unbeknownst to Mary Lou, Mrs. Furtz has borne the burden of suspicions that Mr. Furtz was having an affair prior to his death, because of the arrival of a letter from Aunt Radene.

Her relief at learning the truth of Carl Ray and Radene’s involvement with Mr. Furtz causes her to embrace Carl Ray’s presence in her life. In an effort to have everyone who was related to Mr. Furtz as close to her as possible, she invites Carl Ray to live with them and is truly anxious for his welfare following the accident. When she invites seven members of his West Virginia family to come and stay with her, she learns to embrace chaos, as the nuclear family unit she had at the beginning of the novel dissolves into something more open-ended and expansive.

Mary Lou’s popular, boy-crazy classmate Christy styles herself as a rival for Alex’s affections. However, while Mary Lou is so unconfident that she buries her interest, Christy makes hers manifest as she adopts all the feminine wiles she can to score Alex’s attention. She speaks in “this thin little voice” and wiggles her shoulders and bottom continuously around Alex (5). While Christy manages to make Mary Lou feel unpopular by neglecting to invite her to her end of term party, her artifice backfires in the face of Mary Lou’s more natural manner, which wins over Alex. Thus, Christy is never truly set up as a romantic rival to Mary Lou.

Christy attempts to meddle in Mary Lou’s life again when she sets up an exclusive club called GGP (“Girls Going Places”). While Mary Lou is hurt when Beth Ann joins before she is even invited, she emerges as more powerful when she rejects Christy’s eventual invitations. The club, with its secrecy and exclusivity, seems childish and trivial in the face of everything else that Mary Lou has been through in the summer. She sees that the person she is becoming has no interest in being popular on Christy’s terms.