Swamplandia

Grief and Loss is Swamplandia!’s most overt theme, and it emerges within the first few pages of the narrative. Readers learn that Hilola Bigtree, mother to siblings Ava, Osceola, and Kiwi, has recently died of cancer, unexpectedly and at a young age. Learning to cope with the loss of their mother will become an important process for the Bigtree family, and each of the children will handle Hilola’s death in their own way. Ava, the novel’s protagonist and an introspective 13-year-old, will ruminate over memories of her mother, and ultimately learn how to incorporate her mother’s advice into her everyday decisions and life choices. Her sister Osceola will experience melancholia and will turn to spiritualism and the occult in an effort to remain in contact with Hilola. Kiwi, although not as grief-prone as his sisters, will still experience pangs of sadness, but will, more so than anyone in his family, understand how to move on.

Ava narrates much of the novel, and the reader thus has access to her perspective more so than that of her siblings. She is a solitary, reflective child, and at the beginning of the novel she is still reeling from the loss of her mother. Her grieving process is multi-stage, and initially she honors her mother’s memory by preserving it: She recalls as much as she can about her mother but keeps her memorializing largely to herself. She tries to make sense of her mother’s life and wonders if she truly understood the nature of her parents’ marriage. When it becomes clear that Swamplandia! has been imperiled by the loss of its headliner, Ava contemplates generating revenue and media attention through entering an alligator wrestling contest. She thinks that, although she is too young to officially enter, she can persuade the organizing committee to make an exception based on her parentage: Hilola had been one of the most famous gator wrestlers in Florida. This plan falls through, and Ava is left with the acute sadness of loss and little recourse. She, like her sister, experiences depression and is given to moments of anguish: “Suddenly I missed my mom again with a pain that was ferocious. She was everywhere and nowhere in the kitchen” (184-85). It is not until she realizes that the Bird Man is a threat to her that she begins to move past her initial feelings of grief: In order to escape his clutches, she makes use of everything that her mother taught her about swimming and wrestling with alligators. She hears her mother’s voice in her head, and realizes that in a way, Hilola is still with her, and will be with her as long as she is able to calmly ask herself what her mother would advise her to do in a given situation.

Her sister Osceola struggles even more with the loss of Hilola. She descends into a deep depression and, after finding a copy of The Spiritist’s Telegraph, a guide to spiritualism and contacting the dead, she begins to hold seances and to attempt to contact Hilola. When her attempts fail, she turns her attention to potential suitors (who also happen to be dead), and readers understand that, rather than facing her grief, she has displaced it. Instead of coming to terms with the loss of her mother, she throws her energy into maintaining contact with the ghost of Louis, a boy of about her age (17) who died many years prior while working on a dredging boat. The Chief, although he thinks that age-appropriate boy craziness is part of her motivation, seems to understand (as does Kiwi) that Osceola is struggling to manage her grief, but Ava is partially swayed by Osceola’s claims not only to have contacted the ghost of Louis, but also to be possessed by spirits. That Ava is open to believing her sister ultimately illustrates the damage that unprocessed grief can have on the mind: Osceola’s sense of loss leads both her and her sister astray.

Kiwi, who is more cerebral and less motivated by emotion than his sisters, fares better with his grief, although he does experience moments of acute sadness and it is clear that he still misses his mother. At one point in the narrative he notes that the “last thing” he wants is to have “some other kid’s mother doting on him. The word “mom” still made his stomach flip” (172). And yet, he does manage to process and move on from his feelings of loss, in part because he understands that without Hilola, the family needs to find an income source outside of Swamplandia!. He is able to throw himself into future planning, and because his efforts are grounded in devotion to his family and planning, they become a healthy coping mechanism that contrasts markedly with the obsessive fixation that Osceola has on death, dying, and the dead.