Being Henry David

“I’m nothing like you, I want to tell him, taking in his filthy clothes and the dark smudges under his eyes from dirt or lack of sleep. But what if I am a runaway, and things were so terrible where I came from, I blocked them from my memory? My fingers seek out that sore spot on my head under my hair, with its dried blood and goose-egg lump. What happened to me?”

Danny’s search for identity is complicated by his absence of memory. Danny is 17 years old and therefore already at an important point in his coming-of-age journey. However, without a sense of his past, Danny doesn’t know who he has been and therefore who he’s allowed to be in the future. This is why he fears connecting with Jack and identifying with him.

“And there’s a black beast inside me that doesn’t want me to know stuff. It guards my memory, clawing at my insides and going for my throat if I get too close. So why did the beast wake up when Jack said, maybe you killed somebody? Is that what it won’t let me remember?”

Danny’s buried trauma distorts his self-perception and his behavior throughout the novel. His trauma takes the form of a dark creature inside of him. This internal force frightens Danny, because if he confronts it, he’ll have to confront the mistakes he made in the past. Leaving his trauma unresolved, however, threatens to define his character for the foreseeable future.

“‘Maybe you woke up yesterday morning on your own, but things are different now. You know the kind of business I do, or at least you have an idea. You assaulted one of my clients in that alley. And now you know where I live. We are in this together, Henry. Do we understand each other?’ Cold metal invades my face. Slowly, I nod.”

Magpie’s character introduces a new layer of tension into Danny’s story during his time in New York City. Danny’s memory loss has already made him vulnerable and confused. Magpie’s menace amplifies Danny’s disorientation and complicates his ability to rediscover himself on his own terms. This is why Danny continues to think about Magpie even after leaving New York: He sees the drug dealer as a looming threat.

“The cabin in my dream was just like the one that Thoreau built. I know as I stare at the cover of the book, at the trees and the pond, that’s where I want to be, that I will not spend another night in the city. I will not look at the moon through smog, will not breathe taxicab exhaust, or listen to the beeps of a hundred car horns. And in spite of my dream, if I can make it to the cabin, I believe the black bird will never find me.”

Walden Pond and Concord are primary settings in the novel that contribute to Danny’s growth. He first connects with these places when he’s in New York and reflecting on his circumstances. Amid the bustle and fear of his urban environment, Danny feels peace imagining Thoreau’s rural environments.

“Is this really happening? Did I really almost kill a guy in an alley? What the hell kind of person am I? Simon’s face, shocked and bloody, swims into my consciousness and it’s a struggle to keep the hot dogs down. There is nothing ‘normal’ about me. I have a knife injury that I have to press paper towels against to control the bleeding. I assaulted a guy in an alley. I came close to becoming Magpie’s property in his creepy, surreal world of street kids and drugs. I’m worried about Jack and Nessa, who are still out on the streets, in danger. And then of course, there’s that other detail—I still have no idea who I am.”

Danny’s experiences in New York City distort how he sees himself. In the past, Danny was a self-sacrificing, sympathetic person. In the present, he’s discovering his capacity for violence and anger. His actions terrify him because they seem to suggest that he is fundamentally bad. This is why he feels desperate to leave the city and to find a quieter environment.

“I peer around the girls into the high school building and glimpse a glass case of sports trophies and a hallway lined with lockers. Where did I go to school and what did I do? Did I actually run track? Was I smart? Did I have a cute girlfriend like Hailey who I took to school dances and made out with in my mother’s car? That is, if I have a mother and if she has a car. Before another surge of blackness hits, I push these thoughts away.”

Danny’s experiences in Concord gradually reawaken his memory. Visiting the local high school with Hailey ignites Danny’s curiosity about his own high school experience. At the same time, this setting triggers Danny’s fear response, because he doesn’t want to face what he might have done and who he might have been. He therefore dismisses his curious thoughts in an attempt to protect himself from his buried trauma.

“I turn back to where Thoreau stood to say, point taken. But I don’t have to cut back on too much stuff or food or money or a big house. I’m here, starting from absolutely nothing. What better student could there be than me?”

Danny’s connection with Walden and Thoreau helps him to navigate his personal challenges. Being in the woods that Thoreau wrote about links Danny to his literary hero and gives him the space to reconsider his life and his identity.

“There is a loud cracking sound, and before I can even register what happened, a flash of scrambled images bursts inside my head, metal reflecting twilight. Colors, blue and red, fireworks bursting, a cry like an ice pick in my brain. I fall to the floor, curl up in a ball, hands over my ears.”

Noises, images, and interactions in Concord trigger Danny’s trauma, which is typically expressed through physiological responses—a description based on unscientific theories from self-help books like Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score. When Danny hears the loud door in the school auditorium, his body floods with panic as he physically relives the trauma he experienced during the car accident with Rosie; the idea is that his body carries a memory of the tragedy, even though Danny can’t yet mentally recall it.

“Walden Pond is a mirror, reflecting gray-skies, the pines, and oak trees with new leaves pushing out of fat buds. Some people are out hiking, but the deeper I go into the woods, the more alone I am. Walking faster, I break into this little trot, a comfortable jogging pace that just feels good. […] Even though my body is moving, my mind is relaxed.”

The Walden Pond setting subtly influences Danny’s mental and emotional experiences during his time in the Concord region. The image of the pond as a mirror symbolizes Danny’s ongoing attempts to see himself clearly. Being in this wild setting challenges Danny to reinhabit his body so that he can heal from his psychological trauma.

“A calm feeling spreads through my veins like water warmed by a secret hot spring. Drowning would be so easy, so sweet. Then a strange image flashes behind my eyeballs. Open music box, tinny music playing, plastic ballerina twirling. And then I see her. My sister. Big blue eyes, long eyelashes. Yellow-white hair, pink shirt, one pink sneaker. The music box grinds to a halt, ballerina twisted to one side, broken. And there is blood. My sister’s screams fill my head, jar me from my peaceful drifting.”

Danny’s car accident with Rosie has caused his memory loss. When he starts to remember snatches from the incident, he experiences physical discomfort. His mind has therefore tried to erase the memory so as to protect him. The fragmented prose of this passage represents Danny’s painful emotional experience and his struggle to both remember and forget his trauma.

“It’s hard to focus on moving forward in my completely unsettled life when I don’t even know where I’m going to sleep tonight. Plus, I’m running dangerously low on money. Something’s got to change soon. A part of me actually considers going back to New York to find Jack and Nessa. At least that way, I wouldn’t be so alone. And lonely.”

Danny’s new friendships offer him comfort amid his difficult circumstances. Danny is glad to have escaped New York when he ventures to Concord. However, he also misses Jack and Nessa because they offered him companionship and care. As a result, he considers returning to the city—his friendships with the Zane siblings outweigh the city’s dangers. This impulse shows Danny learning about the importance of community and friendship.

“Now and then I sense people around me, trying to help me, trying to pull me to the surface. They touch my burning face and poke at my side, the place where Simon’s knife sliced through my skin, and I scream, but the pond muffles the sound, keeps everything so quiet. It’s okay to give in to the quiet. I am safe. Don’t have to think about anything, not now. Don’t have to remember. Just rest. The remembering can come later. The facing up to things can wait.”

Danny tries to delay remembering his trauma to protect himself. He wants to heal from his physical ailments, too, and understands that only one form of healing can happen at a time. At the same time, Danny’s desire to procrastinate remembering illustrates his continued fear of facing his trauma.

“Lying back against the pillows, I tell Thomas everything I know, from the moment I woke up at the train station with Walden at my side, not knowing my name or where I came from, to the freak-out scene at the library. I tell him about Simon’s knife and the crime I committed in the alley. I tell him about Jack and Nessa and using Simon’s money to get a train ticket. Tell him the whole thing in a detached way, like it’s somebody else’s story, somebody else’s life. Then I tell him about the few memories I can access.”

Thomas, Danny’s mentor and father figure in the novel, encourages Danny to embrace honesty, openness, and vulnerability. Danny is still afraid of facing who he was in the past and the pain he caused. However, he confides in Thomas, because he trusts him and is learning that healing requires asking for help. This passage therefore marks a crucial turning point in Danny’s search for identity and healing process.

“Kneeling in front of me without a word, she removes the guitar from my hands and leans it against the couch, and I let her do it. Then she puts her hands on both sides of my face. Her lips are soft and sweet, like cherry candy. I get lost completely in that kiss, the same way I get lost in our music.”

Playing music and spending time with Hailey changes how Danny sees himself. Hailey has a calming influence on Danny. Furthermore, she brings out Danny’s empathetic and caring character traits. Playing music brings out Danny’s artistic inclinations and helps him to communicate in new ways, too. These experiences positively impact Danny’s psyche.

“Amnesia can be caused by physical trauma like a crack on the head, the books say. Or, it can be a result of emotional trauma. Like if something really terrible happened, too traumatic to deal with, your brain blocks it out. It’s the brain protecting itself, a defense mechanism. Kind of cool and weird at the same time, when you think about it. Basically all the books agree on one thing: the brain is a mystery. And what causes memory loss and what brings it back are things people don’t completely understand.”

Danny’s literary connections and library explorations contribute to his personal growth. Danny starts to face the complexities of his past and present experiences while reading about amnesia in the library. The slight distance of the scientific texts and the calming environment of the library give Danny a new perspective and encourage him to be more gracious with himself. This passage also provides insight into Danny’s psychological experience and foreshadows the discoveries he will soon make about his past.

“It’s me, but somehow it’s not me. Same face, same hair, but I’m smiling, confident. A high school picture. High school kid who looks secure in his existence. A guy who seems to know exactly who he is. Or was. A guy named Daniel Henderson. My heart seizes up in my chest.”

The missing children database photo of Danny triggers his memories of the past. The image leads into the novel’s lengthy flashback, a narrative device used to reveal the details of Danny’s life prior to waking up in Penn Station with amnesia. The way that Danny responds to the image of his old self develops the novel’s explorations of the Impact of Trauma on Self-Perception and Behavior.

“I guess it’s pretty clear that Rosie and I were not your typical seventeen-year-old guy and his bratty nine-year-old sister. We’d been through a lot together and were the only people in the world who really understood what it was like to be inside our screwed-up family.”

Danny is plagued by guilt for hurting Rosie because he deeply cares about her. This flashback captures the siblings’ close connection and clarifies why Danny ran away when he thought he killed Rosie. He blames himself for what happened because he has always understood himself as Rosie’s protector and has valued their relationship above all others.

“How can I believe Thomas or Sophie? If I had one kid who killed or hurt another, I could never forgive that. There is not enough love and forgiveness in this world to make up for such a thing. Especially not after all my family has been through in the past five years. But I definitely can’t talk about that.”

The more Danny remembers of his past, the more he defines himself according to his mistakes. He is reluctant to forgive himself for hurting his sister and parents, because he has disappointed their expectations of him by acting out.

“I imagine Thoreau standing on this mountaintop in Maine, not the cocky, cranky guy from Concord I’ve gotten to know, but someone out of place, completely amazed by his surroundings. Scared and humbled by his own existence on the planet.”

Thoreau acts as a guide for Danny, who is inspired by Thoreau’s adventures in Maine and Massachusetts, because he feels a connection with the author. This passage therefore foreshadows Danny’s coming decision to visit Maine and the transformative experiences he will have while there. In part, the decision to climb Mount Katahdin is a way of giving something back to Thoreau for the ways that Walden has influenced Danny.

“In fact, we moved three times in five years, each time to another house in a different suburb. On the outside, every one of those houses was really pretty. But inside those houses, nothing changed. Mom was drinking, Dad was leaving, and Rosie and I were trying to be perfect. No matter how many times we moved, we were still us. And to be honest, it wasn’t working out so well.”

Danny’s past and present are bookended by tragedy. Danny’s car accident with Rosie isn’t the Henderson family’s first loss. Danny feels extra guilty about what he did to his sister and parents because he’s contributed to their succession of tragedies. Indeed, the family had yet to heal from their youngest child’s tragic death years prior when Danny and Rosie’s accident happened. This flashback therefore clarifies why Danny feels intense shamed and self-hatred.

“Flashing lights. Blue, red, blue, red. Blinding me. Like that day with Rosie. In the intersection. In the car. I close my eyes against the lights, the noise, and Jack’s blood. When I open them again, I see the accident all over again. Gray truck getting closer, closer, then slamming into us. An explosion of color and terror, shattering glass and grinding metal. Ambulance. Police car. Lights. Blue, red. And my God, so much blood.”

The construction of these lines dramatizes the intensity of Danny’s trauma response through repetition, fractured syntax, and fragmented sentences. while Danny’s narrative voice is typically fluent and often lyrical, here he is unable to coherently produce structured prose. When Jack collapses, Danny throws himself onto his body to save him, and in turn experiences a physiological trigger to seeing his friend in pain.

“As if in slow motion, I turn my attention to the guitar, Thomas’s butterscotch Telecaster, and plug it into the amp. Try to get centered, focus. Can’t screw up. Have to push everything else on my mind away. My past, my future. Everything. Put it all in a box, lock it shut and place a beast on guard in front of it. I know how to do that, right?”

The Battle of the Bands helps Danny to transcend his pain and to access an alternate version of self. He competes in the event even though he’s overcome by anxiety because he wants to support Hailey. This sacrifice reiterates Danny’s empathetic nature. At the same time, Danny’s decision to bury his memories once again conveys his continued fear of facing his trauma.

“This final leg of my journey feels right on some kind of bone-deep soul level. I followed Thoreau to Concord to find out who I was, and now I’m following Thoreau to Maine. Maybe here I can figure out who I’m supposed to be next. At least this trip will give me a chance to clear my head before surrendering to the mess I left behind.”

Danny’s climb to the top of Mount Katahdin helps him to make peace with his past, present, and future selves. The mountain climb challenges him both physically and emotionally. As a result, Danny learns that he is in fact strong and therefore capable of moving forward with his life.