44 pages • 1 hour read
Kai HarrisWhat the Fireflies Knew
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A 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
Coming of Age
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism and death as a result of substance abuse.
In What the Fireflies Knew, KB experiences a gradual (but incomplete) coming of age over the course of the novel because of circumstances beyond her control and because of her growing ability to understand those circumstances. When the novel begins, KB is a child who understands her identity as one rooted in family and traumatic experiences like finding her father dead of an overdose and being without a house in the aftermath. She responds to these experiences by assuming adult responsibilities despite her young age.
Because KB is adultified, she believes at the beginning of the novel that it is within her power to address being without a home and to heal rifts among family members. KB also believes that she has to hold her fear and sadness inside. She initially learns this lesson by watching how her mother responds to adversity. When her mother informs KB that KB and Nia will be staying behind with Granddaddy, KB initially refuses to cry, thinking, “If Momma can fake a smile when she wants to cry, so can I” (16). KB understands her mother’s stoicism as an adult response to pain; the reader later learns that Jacquee is dealing with clinical depression, undercutting her strategy of smiling through pain and trouble. Another sign of KB’s adultification is her belief that she can solve her family’s financial difficulties on her own. Her fruitless search for empty bottles that she can redeem for cash reveals that there is little she can do to fix this problem on her own. She is forced to accept that only adults like Granddaddy can fix such problems. The coming-of-age theme is therefore actual and ironic: KB partly comes of age by learning not to act like an adult.
KB’s race, class, gender, and age are also part of the circumstances that shape her evolving self-identity. Through her interactions with Bobby and Charlotte, she begins to see herself through the racist, classist eyes of the two white children. When KB draws Charlotte with chalk in Chapter 3, KB chooses to make Charlotte look “just a little like [herself]” (57), but Charlotte draws KB with “too-big lips, thick nose, and nappy hair” (58). While KB sees Charlotte as a potential friend and peer, Charlotte sees KB through the distorting lens of racism. KB responds with a faint smile but doesn’t confront Charlotte about the ugliness of the drawing.
This same distortion of who KB is occurs when KB reveals the loss of her father to substance abuse and her lack of a house to Charlotte and Bobby. When Charlotte and Bobby’s mother uses these facts to support her claim that KB is a thief, KB is able to understand the accusation as an attack rooted in racism and classism. Her increasing maturity is such that she is able to see that Charlotte “ain’t no better than Rondell” (231) because both Charlotte and Rondell abuse her trust to take advantage of her. KB’s vocal defense of herself helps to mobilize an ally—Granddaddy—who plainly names this attack on KB’s character as racism. This painful experience leads KB to conclude that racism is a powerful force and wonder “who [she] would be, if [she] could decide for herself” (231) in a world without racism. KB recognizes that racism creates constraints on her social identity. Her awareness of this moment marks her movement from early childhood to late childhood.
Learning to See Adults as Flawed
Another important element of KB’s development as a character is a shift in how she sees the adults in her life. KB’s understanding her father, her mother, and her grandfather changes as she comes to realize that adults aren’t all-knowing figures who make the right or best decisions. They can nevertheless be an important source of wisdom as KB comes of age. Kai Harris reinforces this idea through Granddaddy’s reading of the Bible: He does not revere an omniscient God but suggests that the Bible is a set of stories to help people get through imperfect lives.
The first adult who lets KB down in her father. Although she is aware that there are frequent arguments between her parents and unexplained absences, his death becomes the first step toward her understanding of how imperfect he is. When the police officers dismissively label him because of his addiction, KB hears but doesn’t understand the significance of those comments. It takes reflection on the past, just as her grandfather suggests, for her to understand her father’s contradictions more fully. With her grandfather’s support, she incorporates into her life lessons her father taught her, such as planning ahead and being in the moment.
KB’s character development hence in part revolves around her understanding of her father’s complexities. Through her conversations with Nia, she learns that addiction impeded her father’s ability to show up for his family. By the end of the novel, she understands that “daddies make mistakes” (262). She is also able to look at her father critically. When KB chooses to set the caterpillar free at the end of the novel, the decision is one shaped by the “second lesson [she] learned from Daddy; the one he ain’t follow, in the end” (269). She is able to acknowledge that her father occupies multiple identities and was an imperfect man who nevertheless loved her and taught her useful lessons.
KB’s perspective on her mother also changes. Jacquee’s stoicism and “ice cream cone smile” (113) are traits that KB initially emulates because she believes that these are the best ways to deal with adversity. Her mother’s insistence on grinning and bearing struggles is a prologue to her clinical depression. KB’s growing knowledge of the traumas that her mother lived through—losing her mother when she was KB’s age and violent estrangement from her father—provides context for her mother’s frame of mind. When Jacquee tells her daughter that no person is perfect, but how one deals with imperfection is important, Jacquee acknowledges the costs that KB has borne because of her mother’s imperfection. Harris hence makes Jacquee the explicit vocalizer for this theme. What KB learns from her mother is the inevitability of imperfection and the need to tolerate imperfection in order to grow.
KB applies these lessons about imperfection as she negotiates and renegotiates her relationship with Granddaddy. He is the only adult presence in her life for the bulk of the narrative, making him a source of stability as she deals with the death of her father and the departure of her mother. As a grandfather, he speaks with authority rooted in his knowledge of racism, family history, and his religion. Despite all of this authority, he, too, makes mistakes that cause KB to question her faith in him. He omits the violent denouement of the confrontation with Jacquee, both because he is ashamed but also because he believes that KB should be shielded from violence. KB accepts his flaws because she has already learned to do the same for her father. Despite Granddaddy’s lie by omission, he insists on telling her the truth many times throughout the novel. His faith in her ability to handle the truth serves as an important stepping stone for KB’s more mature perspective on adult fallibility.
Secrets and Lies
One of the reasons that KB struggles so much with the imperfection of the adults in her life and in her relationships with others is that most people (including KB) keep secrets and tell lies. In tandem with her coming of age, KB learns about the damage that secrets and lies can do.
KB initially associates secret-keeping with adults. She knows that her mother keeps secrets about her relationship with Granddaddy and that Granddaddy keeps secrets about her mother. Harris keeps the reader in the dark about these secrets, making them share KB’s childlike perspective on the novel’s events in order to sustain their engagement with the novel. There are also secrets around her father’s life and death. KB takes this secret-keeping as a failure to acknowledge that KB is no longer a small child. The adults in her life so underestimate her that she is often able to uncover the secrets they are keeping, however. When Charlie and Granddaddy incline their heads to be closer together, she listens in because she knows “[i]t’s the way grown folks act when they wanna talk bout something without the kids hearing” (39). This is how she, and therefore the reader, learns the secret of where her mother is.
Knowing this secret is no comfort to KB and bears out Granddaddy’s warning that the “truth ain’t always somethin’ good” (75). Knowing the truth causes KB to worry even more about her mother and believe that it is her responsibility to fix things for her family and her mother in particular. While the adults in her life assume that they are protecting her, these secrets only erode her trust in them just when she needs enough support to make it through a difficult period in her life.
The worsening relationship between Nia and KB throughout most of the novel reveals the corrosive nature of secrets between siblings. Before their father’s death, the siblings were co-conspirators who were able to navigate their tumultuous family life by relying on each other and keeping secrets for each other. That intimacy ended in the time leading up to their father’s death. Nia’s secrets include that her father struck her some time before his death and that she explored sex with her cousin at the family barbeque. Nia keeps her secrets from everyone, making it difficult for them to understand her behavior. Harris hence includes the reader in the theme of secrets and lies; the reader is kept in the dark about some information which is gradually revealed throughout the text, making the experience of learning secrets, such as about Nia, both diegetic and non-diegetic.
Nia’s encounter with her cousin at the barbeque is less a secret and more a sign that she is at a different developmental stage than her sister. For KB, these changes in her sister are mysterious and threatening to their bond because they bring Nia closer to adulthood. When Nia finally shares the secret of what their father did, KB is able to share that Rondell sexually assaulted her. The renewed closeness that KB has with her teaches her the lesson that sharing with her sister means neither of the two “gotta be alone” (242) as they try to heal. KB ultimately learns that refusing to keep secrets and telling the truth are the first steps to healing from trauma.
