74 pages • 2 hours read
Wesley KingOCDaniel
Fiction | Novel | Middle GradeA 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
Naming, Labeling, and Mental Health
At the start of the novel, Daniel lists all the names his older brother calls him: “Uber nerd. Dink. Sally. Lame Wad. Pretty much everything but ‘Daniel’” (20). Naming is an expression of social authority and power. It is also a way of identifying and demeaning that which is different, and reaffirming existing hierarchies of social norms. Fear of being named and stigmatized causes anxiety for those growing up with mental health issues. Sara is known as “Psycho Sara,” which reinforces Daniel’s fear that someone will discover his condition and label him accordingly. He is even more reluctant to talk with anyone about the suffering that is blighting his life.
Labeling by medical authority is not wholly positive either. In a parodic mirroring of the list of names Steve gives Daniel, Sara says, “I have general anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, mild schizophrenia, and depression” (93). It is not clear that such diagnoses have helped her, but they have led to her taking five pills a night. Daniel says, “I had kind of thought that knowing what I had and being able to call it something would make it better” (227). However, the mere labeling of a condition does not alleviate pain. In fact, it seems to render official his “craziness,” while depriving him of his prior sense of being unique. Using medical terminology to categorize Daniel and Sara’s mental health issues might only replace the label of “Star Child” with that of “dysfunctional” or “broken.”
However, it would be simplistic to say that the novel is wholly dismissive of medical or psychological diagnosis. After all, it is the naming of Daniel’s condition as OCD that leads him to seek therapy, and it might also allow deeper insight into his condition. The novel suggests that medical diagnosis and treatment of mental health issues must coexist with genuine emotional support and understanding. It is Sara who gives Daniel the nickname, “OCDaniel”; with the centrality given to this act of naming, King is indicating the importance of intimacy, support, and humor alongside diagnosis.
Teachers, Learning, and Literature
While institutions like the school dance or football team are presented as problematic, they also serve as important sources of social bonding and personal challenge. Daniel finds friendship and a certain degree of acceptance amongst his peers. However, the element of school learning, and ordinary classes, is the exception to this. The teachers are indifferent to the lives of their students. For example, as Daniel says of his geography teacher, “Mr. Keats usually just gives up on us and creates a work period so that he can sit behind his desk and read the paper” (4). This is also the case with Sara’s teaching assistant. As Daniel observes at the dance, Sara “was just sitting there, her eyes glazed over while Miss Lecky texted” (71). Despite her TA being paid specifically to help Sara, she evinces no real concern for or understanding of her. Indeed, this is shown by the fact that Sara does not talk to Miss Lecky, who makes Sara scream when grabbing her arm to “calm her down” (14).
The teachers’ indifference is part of a broader problem, in which “learning” is reduced to a competition for grades, where the needs or individuality of the student are ignored in favor of establishing means of measurement and quantification. It is telling that the “Gifted Program” (3) was closed down; it aimed to acknowledge difference and individuality, and it was a program where Sara and Daniel once belonged. These ideas also point to a broader critique of “objective” and scientific ways of understanding human psychology and suffering. For example, in the book about OCD that Sara gives Daniel, the author claims that OCD is “caused by a malfunction of a component of the brain called the amygdala” (214). It also gives a generalized bullet point list of “fears” for the person living with OCD, including “Sanitation,” “Scrupulosity,” “Personal health Fears,” and “Responsibility Fears” (215). King suggests that this objective assessment offers little comfort for the person living with a mental illness and instead recommends self-reflection and understanding.
Loneliness, Pain, and Understanding
As the German philosopher Martin Heidegger argues in Being and Time (1927), loneliness is not about the physical presence of other humans. At a party, or in a crowd, we can abjectly feel it. Conversely, sat by ourselves in a tranquil place, on a hill, or by a river, we can feel no loneliness at all. Loneliness is about a feeling of dislocation or absence in connection with others and the world. It is a sense of lacking some relation to a social environment that could or should be there. This is precisely why Daniel suffers deeply from this emotion. As he says, when having an attack of anxiety, “I felt hopeless and crazy and lost” (191). Despite having people whom he regularly speaks to and sees, he feels alone.
His pain is also bound up with this dislocation. It is both a cause and a product of separation from the world. When one is in pain, the need for help and sympathy from others becomes intense. The absence of others who can understand one’s pain is felt especially keenly at that moment. This is why Daniel’s nighttime routines become a cycle of despair. The pain of his routine, seen literally in his bleeding hands and gums, deepens his sense of confusion and loss, which in turn exacerbates the routine and the damage he is in inflicting on himself. It ends, as he says, by “letting my silent tears soak back into my skin” (43). His cries of anguish, like Sara’s scream, are not heard.
