Swamplandia

“About this time, Ossie and I started playing Ouija every afternoon. We made the board ourselves. It had a blue painted alphabet and little suns and moons modeled on a picture from The Spiritist’s Telegraph.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Grief and Loss. The two girls begin the narrative grieving their mother’s death. Osceola becomes convinced that she is engaged to marry a ghost. Ava eventually learns to channel her grief by recalling and acting on her mother’s advice. For each of the girls, managing their grief will become part of the coming-of-age process.

“Then something shifted in our house and I felt outnumbered. Ghosts silked into our bedroom like cold water.”

Ghosts are a motif within the narrative. They speak to the theme of Grief and Loss, because their presence indicates the depth of sadness each child in the family feels about their mother’s untimely death. Each time a ghost appears, readers are reminded of the loss of Hilola.

“The first alligator to hatch caused me to frown and lean in, because there was something unusual about her, the alligator’s hide appeared to be red.”

This passage marks the birth of Ava’s red alligator. Ultimately she will use this alligator as part of her escape from the Bird Man. Ava remains tied to setting and place throughout the text, and although her upbringing was unusual, she has been able to learn about nature’s flora and fauna, and she uses that knowledge to her advantage at multiple places within the narrative.

“I was consumed by a helpless, often furious love for a ghost.”

Osceola speaks these lines. They mark one of the novel’s many mentions of ghosts and illustrate the depth of Osceola’s grief over the loss of her mother. Because she is unable to contact her mother using the Ouija board, she begins to try to contact other ghosts. These seances become a way to avoid facing her mother’s death, while still remaining engrossed in her obsession with death and the afterlife.

“But in the staff cafeteria, Kiwi’s colleagues had taught him that it was unwise to self-describe as a genius here in the World. It was unwise to mention colleges or hopes.”

This passage speaks to Kiwi’s characterization. Highly intelligent, but self-taught and poorly socialized from lack of contact with anyone outside of his family, he initially struggles with his peers at the World of Darkness. His intellect and his lack of experience with other people isolate him, although he is ultimately able to find his own place in the world and make friends.

“Every day, Kiwi’s colleagues taught him what you could and could not say to another person here on the mainland. It was a little like having snipers tutor you on the limits of the prison yard.”

Because Kiwi spent much of his youth alone and never had the benefit of classmates, he is prone to social gaffes and uses language that his peers find odd. Part of his coming of age process is learning how to get along with people his own age.

“Water once flowed out of Lake Okeechobee without interruption, or interference from men. Aspiring farmers wanted to challenge her blue hegemony.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Environmental Damage. The Everglades and the Ten Thousand Islands, once home to diverse wildlife and several different Indigenous groups, are threatened by human attempts to turn the region into better farmland.

“Was she crazy? She was crazy. I hardly needed to ask that question.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Grief and Loss. Although Osceola believes herself to be the fiancée of a ghost, her family recognizes her obsession with the underworld as unaddressed grief over the death of her mother.

“‘Look Ava,’ she whispered. ‘Louis says this is where the door to the underworld opens.’”

This passage speaks to the theme of Grief and Loss. Osceola is sure that she can communicate with spirits, but her obsession with her ghostly boyfriend, seances, and the Ouija board happens after she loses her mother. Unable to face a world in which she cannot talk to Hilola, she convinces herself that she can talk to ghosts.

“Vijay explained that this new ride was a tour of ecological devastation. You could take aerial pictures, with a fancy rental camera, of the ‘Floridian Styx.’”

This passage speaks to the theme of Environmental Destruction. In it, the World of Darkness creates a new attraction for tourists that allows them to fly over the Everglades and observe the advance of invasive, exotic species introduced to the area to drain the lowlands and create better farmland. This is a common theme within Floridian literature, and it grounds this text within the tradition of Florida novels with a thematic interest in the environment.

“Suddenly I missed my mom with again with a pain that was ferocious. She was everywhere and nowhere in the kitchen.”

Ava’s Coming of Age experience will largely center around coming to terms with the grief of her mother. Healing is not linear, and she has moments of melancholic relapse throughout the narrative.

“The insult drifted into something unintelligible. It took a beat to realize that he was the joke here, he was the punchline, he didn’t think it came naturally, to see yourself as an object.”

For Kiwi, coming of age centers around learning, education, finding his place in the world of work and professionalism, but also socialization. He is initially unsure how to act among his peers, and he is forced to learn through trial and error.

“The whole time I spoke his slate eyes were liquid and dog-kind above the camp lantern. He didn’t tease me like my brother would have done but instead regarded me with an attentiveness that felt wonderful.”

This passage speaks to Ava’s characterization and to her experiences with the Bird Man. She initially thinks that he is a helpful adult figure, but because of her youth and inexperience, she unwittingly puts herself in the hands of a dangerous predator.

“After so many days and nights of being anonymous, a Margaret, his real name had a narcotic effect.”

This passage marks a turning point for Kiwi. He has just saved a young woman from drowning in the pool at the World of Darkness, and he receives gratitude and recognition from the crowd. For the first time since arriving at the theme park, he feels admiration and respect.

“When I closed my eyes I could see the underworld, a blue wave in front of us.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Grief and Loss. It is part of the journey towards the underworld undertaken by both Osceola and Ava. They will come to understand that there is no such place and will be forced to finally come to terms with the death of their mother.

“We kids cultivated a faith in all the Bigtree legends. I’d heard them so often from my parents that they seemed to me like memories I’d made myself.”

This passage speaks to the text’s interest in the oral storytelling cultures of the Everglades. Tall tales, what in literary terms is understood as magical realism, and the world of myth and legend are a large part of local culture, and in engaging with it, Russell grounds her text in the region’s history.

“Whenever tourists remembered her name, men with beards included, Kiwi wanted to passionately kiss them. Her name is a stranger’s mouth was a resurrection: however briefly, she was alive with him again.”

Although Kiwi does not succumb to his grief as much as his sisters do, he has still been profoundly impacted by the death of his mother. There are a few passages that reveal Kiwi’s dedication to his mother’s memory, and in this one, he is overjoyed to meet people who still remember his mother.

“The humps of broken shell rose around us. We had to pull ourselves through the passage with our hands, if the bow had twisted a few inches to the left or right we would have gotten hung up.”

This passage describes the shell mounds made by the Indigenous Calusa people in the Ten Thousand Islands. It is a detail that grounds this text within the pre-colonial history of the land that would one day become Florida.

“The Chief sat down at a small table. His wrestlers fists joined into one tremendous, pale stone under the microphone. He stared sightlessly out at the crowd of slot machines.”

In this portion of the narrative, readers learn that the Chief has been secretly supplementing the family’s income through odd jobs on the mainland. This shows the Chief’s devotion to his family, but it also reveals the doubts that he must harbor about the economic future of Swamplandia!: He knows that the park is not capable of generating enough income on its own to sustain his family.

“‘This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, Ava Bigtree.’ My voice did not sound much like my mother’s.”

This passage speaks to the importance of family within the novel and to the theme of Grief and Loss. Ava is a family-oriented character who will have to move from a place of acute pain and grief to one of acceptance, and part of that narrative arc for her is learning to see her mother as a guiding voice in the background.

“Because the vast floodplain from Okeechobee flows in a southwesterly direction, you can use the swamp water as a compass. I undid the laces from my left sneaker and tied them to a cypress knee.”

This passage underscores the novel’s interest in the environment. The Ten Thousand Islands, where Swamplandia! is located, is part of a vast but fragile ecosystem that encompasses much of the southern portion of the state of Florida. Russell grounds her narrative within the natural and cultural history of the area, and her characters have a solid body of knowledge about their environmental surroundings.

“Ossie’s ribbon was still on my wrist. All it did was remind me that I had a sister somewhere, the way you’d strap a watch to your wrist to keep you in time.”

Ava is deeply committed to her family and shows that dedication in multiple ways throughout the course of the narrative. Her journey to save Osceola is one such instance of Ava’s love for her family members, and although it is Kiwi who ultimately locates Osceola, Ava’s journey is an important part of the narrative.

“I touched my throat. Personally I had always considered the story of Mama Weeds a little silly.”

This passage speaks to the novel’s interest in magical realism, and to the culture of tall tales that characterizes the oral storytelling traditions in Everglades cultures. Although each member of the family in some way doubts the fantastical elements of the world around them, there is a sense in which some part of them believes in the otherworldly, and their investment in these tall tales speaks to their characterization.