60 pages • 2 hours read
Kathleen GlasgowHow to Make Friends with the Dark
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Struggles of Coping With Grief
Content Warning: This section discusses themes of grief, parental loss, and trauma. It also mentions underage drinking and panic attacks.
How to Make Friends With the Dark is primarily about grief, and it explores the idea of grief mainly through Tiger’s story. She struggles to cope with loss, and the novel shows that this is to be expected; the process of grieving is a journey from the immediate intensity of loss to a gradual acceptance. Tiger discovers, however, that the pain of grief will never leave her and that this is a common experience.
Tiger struggles to cope with June’s death—her bereavement is sudden and unexpected. Also, her grief is complicated by a number of factors, including the absence of any other family, inadequate finances, and her unstable living circumstances. Tiger is a child—she is only 16—and since she has no material or emotional support, she is thrown into the foster care system without warning. She struggles because the system focuses more on processes than people, and The Challenges of the Foster Care System forms another intersecting, central theme in the book. Over time, however, Tiger has a few positive experiences within the system as well—like her encounters with LaLa, Thaddeus, and Teddy—and these help her heal.
Tiger’s pain is also intensified and complicated by the guilt and regret she feels over her last conversation with June. The final interaction they have is an emotional argument, and the last thing Tiger says to her mother is to leave her alone—and June does so, permanently. Their argument remains unresolved, and Tiger is unable to wash away this guilt. Thus, she tries to honor her mother by perpetually carrying out what she perceives to be June’s last wish: wearing the lace dress that June picked out for her.
Tiger’s grief manifests in several ways—physiologically, cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally. She loses her appetite to the point where she is unable to keep any food down at all. She begins to think of herself as a bad daughter for letting her mother die alone. She feels disconnected from everyone around her, especially because she doesn’t think they understand her loss. The suddenness of June’s death is also traumatic for Tiger, and it manifests in anxiety and panic, especially at the thought of further abandonment. Tiger alternates between lashing out in anger and withdrawing, in search of an escape. She eventually turns to alcohol for some relief.
Over the course of the novel, Tiger cycles through the multiple stages of grief. She begins at denial since she is unable to process June’s loss. She moves through anger at the people around her; then, she bargains with June to at least visit her in her dreams. Tiger experiences depression and despondency in her darkest moments; eventually, she accepts that her life is forever altered. This acceptance is helped along by the friends Tiger eventually finds along the way, pointing to The Importance of Community in Healing. However, the most important message about grief that Tiger learns is that it never completely goes away. She learns to exist with it, and to find hope despite it, while adapting to a new normal.
The Challenges of the Foster Care System
In the Author’s Note after the novel’s conclusion, Kathleen Glasgow writes that she drew inspiration from her own mother’s experiences in a state-run orphanage to explore the stories of bereft children (413). This is why she centers her critiques of the foster care system within the novel. Tiger’s challenges and experiences with the system point to problems within the system itself.
When Tiger’s mother passes away, she immediately becomes a ward of the state. Foster care is a state-run service to ensure the safety of minors who do not have safe homes or care, and since Tiger has no other family or relatives who can assume her guardianship, she becomes a candidate for foster care. There are multiple types of foster care settings, ranging from placement with relatives, to placement with non-relative caregivers, to placement in group care settings (“Foster Care.” Child Welfare Information Gateway). Over the course of the novel, Tiger experiences all three, each of which comes with its own set of challenges.
Within the foster care system, Tiger is first placed with non-relative caregivers—first Georgia, then LaLa—because her case worker, Karen, is unable to find any relatives who can take Tiger. Tiger’s experience at Georgia’s house highlights one of the common problems faced by those in foster care: the lack of adequate empathy or care following a traumatic experience (Dupere, Katie. “6 Problems With the Foster Care System—and What You Can Do to Help.” Mashable). Even as Tiger is still grieving her mother’s death, she is treated coldly and harshly by Georgia, who administers a common standard of care to all the foster children she receives. Rather than understanding that Tiger’s aversion to food stems from her deep anguish at her mother’s death, Georgia sternly forces Tiger to drink a glass of milk, which Tiger later vomits up. Georgia offers her no kind words or concern, immediately expecting Tiger to follow the house rule of silence after bedtime. Foster homes, especially group settings, see children from all manner of backgrounds and with a range of different needs and experiences. Unfortunately, this means that individual needs often get ignored, which only exacerbates the respective child’s trauma, as in Tiger’s case.
Tiger is moved to Shayna’s care—the care of a relative—after Shayna is discovered and agrees to be Tiger’s guardian. Unfortunately, Tiger continues to face challenges with this new arrangement, partly because of problems with the system. Tiger is released into Shayna’s care without Shayna having gone through a stringent background check procedure; Karen is unaware of Shayna’s alcoholism or her relationship history with Ray. Although there is pending paperwork and home visits to be completed before Shayna can legally become Tiger’s guardian, Tiger is still placed in Shayna’s care before the process is complete. Neither Tiger nor Shayna is given adequate support or guidance by the system, as a result of which they struggle to figure out their finances and Shayna is unsure about how to deal with her abusive boyfriend.
On the other hand, the rigid processes in place elsewhere in the system also negatively impact Tiger. The system has a number of players and processes involved in the lives of foster children, from guardians to social workers and courts (Dupere). The rigidity of its rules punishes mistakes and slip-ups on the part of the child with immediate, often severe consequences. For instance, when Tiger is arrested for driving while intoxicated, she immediately lands in juvenile detention because Shayna has not yet been listed as her legal guardian, and Tiger becomes a ward of the state.
Tiger’s time in juvenile detention highlights yet another issue with the foster care system: the “foster care to prison pipeline” (Perez, Jaxzia. “The Foster Care-to-Prison Pipeline: A Road to Incarceration.” The Criminal Law Practitioner). This refers to the increased risk of institutionalization for children in the foster care system. Tiger reflects that many children in the detention center would have stories like the ones she has heard from Thaddeus and Leonard. Studies corroborate her hunch: Statistics show that more than half of foster children will have at least one encounter with the juvenile legal system by the time they turn 17 (Perez).
Despite these challenges with the foster care system, Tiger does also have some positive experiences within it through the connections she forms with LaLa, Thaddeus, and Teddy. Glasgow writes that she modeled these exceptional individuals on her own mother; she says she uses these characters to demonstrate how, with adequate support and care, children in foster homes can experience love, community, and healing (414-15).
The Importance of Community in Healing
While grief, loss, and trauma are all central threads in the novel, it simultaneously explores the process of healing. Tiger’s experiences highlight the importance of community in this journey.
After June’s death, Tiger struggles with her intense loneliness. She has lost her mother, whom she was very close with, and she lacks a social network that can support her grief. Besides June, the only other significant relationship in Tiger’s life at that time is her friendship with Cake. However, Tiger begins to feel disconnected from Cake because she does not think that Cake, who comes from a stable, two-parent family, can comprehend her loss. While Cake is a good friend who constantly reaches out to check on Tiger, Tiger begins getting irritated by her. For instance, when Cake asks her if she is doing okay, Tiger gets angry at the question since she is clearly not okay; Tiger also resents that Cake goes back to school and resumes her life after the tragedy that upended Tiger’s life. Tiger does not have anyone in her life who can understand her feelings and share her experiences. This lack of community is the biggest impediment to her healing. However, when she finds her community, she begins to experience glimmers of happiness and hope again.
For Tiger’s healing, community is not just about having people in her life who care; it is about having people in her life with similar, shared experiences. This is why she cherishes her relationships with Thaddeus, Mae-Lynn, and Shayna. While Cake and Tiger have been friends for years, they have much less shared context after June’s death, especially in the immediate aftermath of loss. In contrast, Tiger shares the context of a foster home with Thaddeus, the context of parental loss with Mae-Lynn, and the context of family with Shayna. Thus, despite these relationships being new to her life, she forms close bonds with them quickly.
Similarly, Teddy’s empathetic understanding rescues Tiger from despondency and helps her to heal. Several unfortunate events disrupt Tiger’s life just when she is beginning to pick up the pieces: Ray’s arrival, her intoxicated driving accident, and her eventual stint in juvenile detention. These are Tiger’s darkest moments, but once again, she emerges from her hopelessness with Teddy’s help. Though Teddy is present in Tiger’s life for a relatively short amount of time, she has a significant impact on Tiger’s grieving and healing. She offers Tiger warmth and stability, and she is even able to help Tiger to let go of some of her guilt and grief. This is symbolized through Tiger agreeing to stop wearing the dress that her mother bought for her, which she has worn ever since her mother’s death.
Tiger is eventually able to move to a place of acceptance after Shayna takes over her care again, and the sisters find a fresh start together. Tiger’s community—both new and old—aid her in this; Cake, Thaddeus, and Mae-Lynn even help her pack her things before she moves, which symbolizes their help and support for her new start. By the novel’s conclusion, Tiger has a well-rounded community that aids in her healing. She has Cake, who knew Tiger and her life before June passed away. Then, there are Shayna and Dustin, Tiger’s family. She also has Thaddeus and Mae-Lynn, who are new friends with strong, shared contexts of grief, loss, and trauma; also, Lupe and the grief group she and Tiger attend together help Tiger in her journey toward healing.
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