62 pages • 2 hours read
Pat SchmatzBluefish
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Challenges and Transformative Power of Literacy
At the beginning of the novel, Bluefish’s eighth-grade protagonist, Travis, cannot read the vast majority of words. He can only decipher his name, along with simple, short words like “the” and “and.” It’s not explained exactly why he can’t read, but there are several possible contributing factors. It’s implied that Travis may have a learning difference because when he looks at a page of text, he sees a jumbled, confusing mess: “Long lines of words tromped across the pages like columns of ants” (92). However, the bigger obstacle is that the methods practiced by Travis’s previous teachers and reading specialists were not effective for him, and school feels like a claustrophobic, prison-like environment where Travis is reprimanded and bullied for being “stupid” and for “not trying.” He’s actually smart and is trying, but he may not be a neurotypical or “normal” student. Travis especially resented being told to “try” by the literacy specialist at his old school because this implied that he wasn’t trying, which meant she really didn’t understand him at all.
Seeing that his teachers and peers have given up on him, Travis responds by giving up on school. When he moves to a new school for eighth grade, none of his teachers seem to know his academic situation or how to help him until his Reading teacher, McQueen, figures out that he can’t read and offers to help him learn before school three mornings per week. For McQueen, this is extra, unpaid labor that he does simply because it’s emotionally rewarding.
Not all teachers would logistically be able to offer the help McQueen gives Travis, but McQueen is Travis’s saving grace. His commitment to Travis illustrates how, sometimes, all it takes for a student to turn their performance around is the knowledge that one adult cares about them and believes in their potential. When McQueen praises Travis, it fuels his desire to learn and his belief that learning is possible. Additionally, McQueen shows Travis the beauty that can be found in books, which can transport readers to other worlds rather than trapping them within walls, like Travis feels school does:
McQueen found the swamp in those words, and he took Travis there with him. Not just into the nighttime snowstorm, but into the fox itself, moving through the winter woods and hearing and smelling that mysterious animal world. The lines of ink on the page were a secret code. For the first time, Travis wanted to crack it. More than anything (92-93).
Travis discovers that reading is not just deciphering words but unlocking worlds that reveal otherwise inaccessible knowledge, wisdom, and meaning. Experiencing the joys that reading has to offer and the opportunities it unlocks, Travis finds motivation within himself for the first time, which makes learning possible. Previously, when he didn’t care about learning or believe that he could learn, obviously, he wasn’t going to learn. Velveeta plays a key role in Travis’s journey to literacy and shows how peers can be almost as important as teachers in the educational environment. Having a friend, Velveeta, who doesn’t make fun of him for his inability to read and instead thinks it’s cool and brave that he’s learning, gives Travis more confidence and self-assurance that learning to read is not only possible but also an interesting and worthwhile thing to do.
Coping with Loss and Family Trauma
Both Travis and Velveeta are coping with grief over the recent death of a loved one: Travis lost his dog, Rosco, while Velveeta lost her best friend and stand-in father figure, Calvin. Initially, both characters attempt to cope with this heavy grief alone because they don’t have other close friends to turn to and don’t feel supported or understood by their remaining family members. Both children have somewhat troubled relationships with their families. Travis’s parents died when he was three, and his grandfather has spent most of the last decade drunk. Although he’s recently quit drinking, Travis still feels like his grandpa doesn’t truly love him or want to have custody of him. Velveeta’s father is not mentioned, but her mother is also often drunk and doesn’t seem concerned about where Velveeta is or what she’s doing. Velveeta also “hates” her older brother, Jimmy, who is implied to be a drug dealer. Whereas Travis felt like Rosco was a parental figure to him, Velveeta felt the same about Calvin. Both children lose these surrogate parental figures and are unsure how to proceed without them.
One important lesson that both children learn through grief is that, although their loved ones are now dead, they’re not truly “gone,” and their influence lives on. As Velveeta says, “It’s not like you’re someone who never had a Rosco, right? So even though Calvin’s dead, it’s not like I’m someone who never had a Calvin” (224). Velveeta feels like Calvin helped shape her and “save” her from the person she would have become without him, and now that he’s gone, his positive influence has not disappeared. Velveeta and Travis both speak or write to their deceased loved ones, illustrating how love and connection can transcend death. They also carry mementos from their loved ones as reminders of their significance. Grief is the form love takes when someone dies, making it a complex emotion that, while painful, can also be productive and instructive.
At first, when Rosco and Calvin die, Travis and Velveeta feel like these characters can never be replaced, which creates a massive sense of irreconcilable loss. However, over time, Travis and Velveeta learn to trust and love other people in the absence of Rosco and Calvin. Travis reconciles with Grandpa to a great degree, talking to him more and appreciating all that he does. He also befriends Velveeta and Bradley, finds a teacher mentor in McQueen, and even befriends a neighborhood dog, Larry, who at first seemed too aggressive to befriend. Although Velveeta does not appear to reconcile with her mother or Jimmy, she finds a motherly figure in Connie, the librarian who gives her a job and looks after her as Calvin once did. She also befriends Travis and Bradley and even allows herself to be vulnerable and share her emotions and secrets with Travis. These new relationships do not diminish the importance of Rosco or Calvin but suggest that new relationships are always possible for the living and should not be shunned simply because a loved one has died.
The Development of Friendship and its Role in Personal Growth
At the novel’s beginning, neither Travis nor Velveeta have many friends, but by the end, both characters learn the value of friendship and embrace its power for personal transformation and growth. At his old school, Travis didn’t have many friends because he was perpetually bullied for being a “bluefish,” meaning he was in a special reading group, and his peers viewed him as “stupid.” Instead of making friends, Travis got into a lot of physical fights. At his new school, Travis doesn’t know anyone at first, so he doesn’t have friends at first. Although Velveeta has been in the local school system and has known the same kids for years, she doesn’t have many close friends because other kids see her simply as an “entertainment monkey” who is meant to tell jokes and then leave them alone. She doesn’t get invited to activities outside school very often, and she’s reluctant to invite anyone to her mom’s trailer or tell other kids anything about her personal life, which she considers to be embarrassing due to her socioeconomic class and family dynamics. With few friends, at first, both Travis and Velveeta feel disconnected from others and have even developed a fear of vulnerability and closeness.
Upon meeting, Travis and Velveeta “click” quickly on a surface level, but it takes them a while to develop a true friendship. They eat lunch together and chat, but they keep secrets from each other until they develop trust. When Bradley approaches them to be their friend, they treat him with even more skepticism because he’s extremely smart and also upper-class with two loving and attentive parents, which makes them feel self-conscious about their own socioeconomic classes and family dynamics. Over time, Travis and Velveeta come to trust and accept Bradley, even if they don’t share as many secrets with him as they do with each other. Bradley illustrates how a person’s class and family situation do not entirely dictate their personality or how they treat others who are different from them. Velveeta and Travis, in their relationship with each other, demonstrate the potential for friendship’s healing capacity because they help each other through grief. They also help each other achieve their goals: Velveeta helps Travis learn to read, and Travis helps Velveeta find a sense of purpose and identity that is not dependent upon her own family or her tendency to be a class clown.
Most importantly, Velveeta and Bradley help Travis believe in himself and change his perception of his own identity. Whereas at his old school, he was bullied for being a “bluefish,” Velveeta and Bradley help Travis reexamine the true meaning of “bluefish.” Similar to the term “special education,” “bluefish” does not actually mean “stupid” but instead means “different,” as in neurodivergent or simply nonconformist. As Velveeta says, “‘That bluefish is the moolio fish. He’s all cazh, kicking back on a wave while One and Two and Red are swimming like a herd of water sheep. […] Look at how the bluefish will not swim when the others swim. The bluefish is at the anti-dance’” (221). Like Travis, the bluefish is actually “coolio-moolio,” not stupid. This realization is extremely important for Travis because his friends allow him to redefine his destructive self-concept that he’s held onto for years into a new self-concept that celebrates diversity, creativity, and different types of intelligence.
