47 pages • 1 hour read
Katherine ArdenSmall Spaces
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2018A 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
Denying Loss
As the book begins, the reader only has a dim understanding that something is wrong with Ollie. She has withdrawn from school activities and buries herself in bike rides and books. We know she is escaping from something, but that something won’t be apparent until much later. It isn’t until we learn that her mother died a year earlier that Ollie’s behavior becomes comprehensible. She embodies one of the book’s central themes in her denial of the loss of her mother.
Initially, this emotional blockage manifests in small ways, such as Ollie’s aversion to sympathy. “Mr. Easton looked sympathetic now. […] Ollie did not mind impatient teachers, but she did not like sympathy face. She crossed her arms” (4). She is equally resistant to her father’s attempts to be understanding: “Her dad quit stirring the sauce and came and sat down beside her. Now he was going to be understanding. She hated understanding voice as much as she hated sympathy face. Ollie felt her ears start to burn” (22).
Ollie recognizes that others feel sorry for her loss, but this is a loss she is unready to acknowledge. Her solution is to withdraw from people completely. She says, “At least the book had romance and high-seas adventures and other absolutely not Evansburg things. Ollie liked that. Reading it meant going to a new place where she wasn’t Olivia Adler at all” (11).
Not only does Ollie have an aversion to sympathy, but she has a horror of tears, which is one of the reasons why she initially dislikes Coco, who cries so easily. Ollie’s grueling experience in the smiling man’s land puts her in touch with her loss at a visceral level and gives her some insight. She says, “Coco didn’t cry because she was weak. Coco cried because she felt things. Ollie never cried because she didn’t feel things. Not anymore. Not really. She tried not to feel things” (161). A scant page later in the novel, Ollie begins crying for the first time. Coco has helped Ollie tap into the grief she has suppressed for a year. This catharsis comes at a critical juncture because Ollie’s willingness to accept her loss renders her immune to the temptations of the smiling man.
Other characters in the novel also exhibit the same tendency to deny loss. Jonathan makes a deal with the smiling man because he cannot accept the loss of Caleb. For his part, Caleb doesn’t want to lose Jonathan either, so he goes to stay with him in the shadow realm. Linda Webster doesn’t want to lose the farm or her money, so she makes a deal with the smiling man. Denial of loss is Seth’s stock in trade. Luckily, Ollie comes to terms with her loss in time to save herself and her whole class.
Clinging to the Past
Just as multiple characters in the novel deny their losses, they exhibit a parallel characteristic—clinging to the past. Once again, Ollie illustrates this theme in behaviors that attempt to keep her connection to her mother alive. Ollie’s phone is cumbersome and outdated, but she refuses to get rid of it: “Ollie’s phone was a heavy thing that flipped open. […] But the phone had been her mother’s. Dad had tried to get her a new one for her birthday, but she had screamed at him and thrown it across the room” (97). Obviously, it is an outdated piece of technology that doesn’t serve Ollie very well. She demonstrates a similar attachment to her mother’s watch:
Ollie’s watch was also a compass and an altimeter. It had been her mother’s. Ollie glanced at it, but only out of reflex. Ollie’s mom had worn it that last day, and it didn’t work anymore. The watch gave wildly varying altitudes and completely inaccurate times; the compass did not point north (99).
Like the phone, the watch is no longer functional, yet Ollie clings to it to keep her mother alive. While unhealthy, her obsession with these physical objects isn’t nearly as self-destructive as the clinging behavior of the two ghosts—Cathy and Beth. Ollie and her friends have an unnerving encounter with Cathy, the mother of Jonathan and Caleb. She waits endlessly in her phantom cabin for her boys to come home, but they never do. Similarly, Beth dwells in the shadow land version of Webster farm, unable to move on without Jonathan. She and Ollie have a conversation about getting lost in the past. Ollie asks:
“Is Cathy forgetting herself? But—why is she here? Because her sons are?” “Yes,” said Beth. “Cathy wouldn’t leave her children, not for anything. But that’s what happens to ghosts. Their minds go, and then you are only memory, doing the same things over and over” (170).
Ironically, Ollie’s desperation to cling to her mother’s watch offers her salvation. The watch begins to transmit messages to help Ollie navigate her way through the frightening realm of the smiling man. Because of these messages, she realizes that her mother is still with her. In fact, this is the only reason she is able to turn down the smiling man’s deal: “She held up her wrist with the watch. ‘My mother is already with me. Helping. Maybe she’s a little easier to hear in this weird ghost world of yours. But I’m pretty sure she never left me, not at all’” (204). The important point to note is that Ollie’s mother is helping her in the present moment, not the past. Knowing this, Ollie can stop clinging to former events and move ahead with her life.
The Price of Desperation
Small Places is full of examples of demonic bargains between the smiling man and his various victims. These bargains hinge on desperation and deception. The smiling man chooses his victims carefully. They must be at the end of their rope. Their fear of loss must be so overwhelming that they are desperate. As Beth writes,
I cannot excuse what he did next. But Jon was desperate, outside in the wet, grieving. ‘Please,’ Jonathan said aloud. ‘Please. I’m sorry. I just want him back. I’ll do anything. Anything.’ And, out of the mist, a voice answered (33-34).
Linda Webster is equally eager to make a deal. Ollie suggests that she did so because she was frightened of the smiling man:
‘Scared of me?’ said Seth. He laughed, not kindly. ‘She was more afraid of the future. Her farm was about to go under. She was going to go to prison for fraud. All her pretty dreams sold in bankruptcy court, and all her sunlit life in nature cut short by bars. I’ll do anything, she said’ (199-200).
In dealing with the devil, an adversary must realize that demons might tell the truth when constrained to do so, but they may not feel compelled to tell the whole truth. Deception is their favorite weapon to confuse and weaken prey. The smiling man willingly strikes a deal with Linda for a busload of schoolchildren. However, these lives are not hers to give. Ollie quickly notices this discrepancy: “He was a cold, tricky thing, but there were rules, and he’d broken one, taken what someone didn’t have the right to give. ‘I can only give you power over me,’ said Ollie, more and more sure. ‘You can’t take it’” (205).
The smiling man tries to deceive Ollie one more time by mimicking her mother's voice. Ollie counters this maneuver by pointing out that her mother is with her all the time, and her presence isn’t something the smiling man can control or withhold. Ollie’s ability to keep her own desperation at bay has allowed her to learn the devil’s game well enough to perpetrate some deception of her own. She tricks Seth into revealing the way to turn scarecrows back into humans.
By the end of the story, it is clear that the smiling man regards this dance of desperation and deception as a game and that Ollie has bested him because she refuses to capitulate to desperation. Since the smiling man returns in future books in the series, one can only assume he hopes to tap into Ollie’s hidden needs someday:
Seth bowed suddenly. ‘Check and mate to you,’ he said. ‘Clever girl.’ Ollie, wary, said nothing. In Seth’s eyes was almost a look of wonder. ‘I will be back,’ he said. He didn’t say it like a promise, but a fact. ‘Nevertheless, I thank you. I do not lose very often’ (206).
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By Katherine Arden
