83 pages • 2 hours read
Nora Raleigh BaskinAnything But Typical
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2009A 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
Writing
Jason feels trapped inside his body, unable to easily communicate with others. The only way he can fully express himself is through his writing. When he was a young boy, learning the alphabet gave him a lifeline: He could communicate with his parents though written language when he could not communicate through speech or nonverbal communication. Describing the feeling of being able to express himself in writing, Jason says that there are “things loose inside me, like letters of the alphabet that have no meaning until they are all put together. In one particular way that no one else can do. In one moment. In one voice. That is mine” (185).
Jason studies the craft of writing to write a memoir that would share his version of reality with the world—this memoir, of course, is the book that we are reading. In his depictions of his daily life at home and school, Jason portrays the drastic difference between his outward behaviors and his internal experience. He knows what people around him, even his family, assume about him and deeply feels their dismissal and disdain. Writing offers him an opportunity to discuss what it’s like to be an autistic boy in a neurotypical world. In writing, however, his voice conveys an emotional depth that would shock those who only communicate with him verbally. In reading what Jason has written, we question our judgments and assumptions about autistic people by seeing how much we rely on spoken words for connection and meaning.
Through his keen powers of observation, Jason gleans insight about himself and the world. He writes movingly about the fact that our society expects boys to be tough and never cry, exploring how hard this expectation is for his brother, who is moved to tears easily, and for himself, whose lack of tears hurts his mother.
Jason’s writing also offers him the opportunity to creatively heal the wounds of his difficult life. He creates characters that experience similar struggles and sets them up to prevail. Through his story about Bennu, he comes to terms with his own internal struggle to accept himself exactly as he is.
Neurotypical Versus Atypical
The overarching theme in Anything But Typical is the difference between being neurotypical or atypical. Jason explains that in writing his memoir, he has switched into a language that is not his own to tell his story to a neurotypical audience.
Although he understands that neurotypical people mostly see his outlying traits, he does not feel weird internally. While for them, “That kid is weird […] he blinks eyes, sometimes one at a time. Sometimes both together […] And he flaps his hands […] but the thing people see the most is his silence” (1), for Jason, the way neurotypicals behave and speak is very odd. He experiences a constant disconnect, like a traveler in a foreign country: He simply does not speak the language, nor do they speak his, but the burden is on him to find a way to communicate and fit in.
While Jason studies people and learns from his therapist what neurotypical behavior people expect of him, he sees inherent contradictions in these expectations: “neurotypicals like it when you look them in the eye. It is supposed to mean you are listening, as if the reverse were true, which it is not: Just because you are not looking at someone does not mean you are not listening. I can listen better when I am not distracted by a person’s face” (4).
Although he makes an effort to fit in with the neurotypical world, Jason feels misunderstood and sometimes defiant. An observant outsider, Jason makes astute insights about the way people around him cause more harm than they intend via their contradictory and confusing communication.
The Unreliable Narrator
Throughout the novel, Jason reflects on the writing process, divulges details of the craft of writing, and discusses coming up with his characters’ motivations. As the narrator, he also offers the reader insight into what drives him. One major clue is Jason’s allusion to Holden Caulfield, the famously unreliable narrator of The Catcher in the Rye who engages in fantasy thinking and makes up personas and relationships, and who gains the reader’s sympathy by portraying himself as a misunderstood victim. In comparing himself to Holden, Jason is telling us that he too is sometimes an untrustworthy narrator, particularly around the subject of his own difficult behaviors.
When he hurts his brother Jeremy in a fit of rage, kicks his cousin, and knocks over his teacher’s pottery wheel, he claims he doesn’t know how these incidents occurred. He seems to have no memory of what he physically did but can convey with detailed accuracy what other people did to provoke him: “I didn’t do anything to Mrs. Hawthorne to make her send me home” (63). Portraying these events in this manner makes it easier to sympathize with him and harder to forgive the people he is acting against. It is easy to understand why Jason would want to cover up his failures and flaws: He feels deeply vulnerable about his behaviors, how hard he has to work to fit in, and how far he still is from being able to totally accept himself.
