The Pinballs

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1976

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-14

Chapters 15-21

Chapters 22-26

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Pinballs

When Mrs. Mason first tells Carlie she can help Harvey, Carlie disagrees because the three children are “pinballs” thrust together by circumstance “and settled in the same groove” (29). For Carlie, the image of a pinball symbolizes her experience as a child in the foster system: She is not an autonomous person but an object who is moved around and acted upon without her consent.

Carlie tells Mrs. Mason that pinballs “hit this bumper, they go over there. They hit that light, they go over there” (31). This is how Carlie sees herself, Harvey, and Thomas J. They “hit” up against certain circumstances and as a result are moved against their will. They cannot “get settled” without someone putting another dime into the machine and moving them again (30). She tells Mrs. Mason that pinballs “are just things” (30). She believes the world sees her and the boys as objects rather than people.

By the end of the novel, Carlie changes her mind. She even tells Thomas J to never “let anybody call you a pinball” (136). She doesn’t want Thomas J to grow up with the same disempowered mindset she had. She tells him that, instead, all they can do is keep trying, and if they are trying to change their circumstances for the better, they are not pinballs.

Lists

Lists are a recurring motif in the novel that emphasize The Effects of Parental Abuse on Children. Once Harvey gets to the Masons’ house, he finds that he cannot stand to compose a letter to his father as Carlie does to her mother and Thomas J does to the Benson twins. Instead, he starts composing lists. Some of Harvey’s lists provide a way to simplify his traumatic memories, thereby isolating them for identification and reflection from a greater emotional distance. His happier lists offer a distraction when processing the trauma overwhelms him.

The first list Harvey makes is “Bad Things that Have Happened to Me” (36). He makes the list to try to work through the adverse situations he has experienced. Carlie sees his list and opens up about the abuse she has faced for the first time, shocking Harvey and Thomas J into silence. The lists also provide a method of escapism. Harvey makes a list called “Books That I Have Enjoyed” (41). The list steers him toward happy thoughts and away from “unpleasant memories” that some of the other lists bring up, such as “Promises My Mother Broke” (41). The lists help the children name and work through the traumas they have experienced, visualize what they want for their future, allow them to empathize and connect with one another, and provide an outlet when those traumas become too much to bear.

Harvey’s Puppy

One day, Harvey makes a list of disappointments called “Gifts I Got That I Didn’t Want” (59). The first thing on the list is an electric football game his father got him for his birthday instead of the puppy his mother promised him before she left. After her desertion, his father wouldn’t get him a puppy as “a matter of principle” (60). For Harvey, who used to look through ads for puppies with his mother, having a puppy came to symbolize having a happy, healthy family. The fact that his father refused to get him a puppy, or a pet of any kind, symbolizes his father’s neglect and dismissal of him and his care.

Later, when Harvey is despondent in the hospital, Carlie realizes that getting a puppy might “cure him” (114). The puppy, which she and Thomas J sneak into the hospital for Harvey’s birthday, becomes a symbol of their care and affection for him. When he sees the puppy, Harvey cries for the first time since his father ran over his legs. He says, “‘It just makes me feel so—’ He broke off. ‘I don’t know. It’s just that I didn’t think—oh, I don’t know how I feel.’ He cried again” (120). The gift of the puppy breaks down an emotional barrier that had prevented him from processing the trauma of his accident, because it makes Harvey finally feel cared for. He realizes that someone had heard him, absorbed information about his likes and dislikes, and intentionally acted to make him happy and show their care for him.