Tears of a Tiger

As Andy and his friends continue to navigate The Impact of Grief and Guilt in this section of the novel, Draper deliberately juxtaposes signs of healing with evidence of continuing emotional anguish, particularly as Andy’s lack of healing persists despite his friends’ relative success at moving forward with their lives. As Andy continues to attend classes and extracurricular activities, it becomes clear that rather than healing like his friends, he is simply going through the motions, and his every action has become a painful veneer that only thinly masks the trauma and pain that consume him a little more each day. To further emphasize his deteriorating mental state, Draper makes it a point to interrupt accounts of Andy’s day-to-day activities with his periodic meetings with Dr. Carrothers: the only reliable window that the author provides into the reality of Andy’s true mental state. As Robbie’s metaphorical ghost even comes to haunt Andy in his dreams, it is significant that he cannot envision a concrete future for himself. Instead, he sinks deeper into depression, and it becomes harder for him to experience any kind of joy.

While Andy’s sessions with Dr. Carrothers do show some signs of superficial improvement, Andy’s fixation on Robbie’s death and his suicidal ideation never disappear entirely. By engineering a false sense of hope that Andy will recover his mental and emotional equilibrium, Draper once again emphasizes the vital importance of Recognizing a Mental Health Crisis, for she creates a scenario in which Andy’s support system withdraws just when he needs it the most. Fooled by the façade of mental health that he insists on presenting to the world, the various people who might otherwise have offered him continued support instead begin to assume that he has come through his crisis. Thus, they fail to recognize his internal downward spiral. In this section of the novel, Andy’s growing depression therefore takes on a life of its own and consumes even the more positive moments that he encounters from time to time. In this way, Andy’s crisis mirrors the real-world challenges that clinical depression can present to those who have it. By simultaneously giving Andy many reasons to appreciate life while still portraying him as deeply depressed, Draper attempts to forge a strong connection—even a lifeline—with any of her readers who may also happen to have depression, for the narrative implies that being depressed and experiencing joy are not mutually exclusive; both can be true at the same time. To that end, Draper portrays a range of experiences that include both joy and pain. For example, Andy writes a letter to Robbie’s parents asking for their forgiveness and focuses on positive memories; similarly, his brother, Monty, asks happier questions and tries to keep life simpler for Andy. Thus, although Andy himself eventually succumbs to his grief and takes his own life, Draper nonetheless sends an important message to her readers that recovery from even such a grievous traumatic experience is possible by maximizing one’s reliance upon a wide-ranging network of social supports.

Within the world of the story, however, Andy is destined to lose his own battle with The Impact of Grief and Guilt, and thus the more optimistic moments of the plot take on an element of situational irony. For example, when Keisha expresses her confidence that Andy will be able to recover with the help of his friends, this statement stands in stark contrast with the eventual reality of his demise and further highlight the failure of Andy’s loved once to be successful at Recognizing a Mental Health Crisis that is unfolding right in front of them. Draper heightens the sense of impending doom by crafting the scene in which Andy’s classmates debate Macbeth’s right to live after his crimes, and Andy’s abrupt departure from the room wordlessly conveys the true depths of his own continued suffering. Andy associates Macbeth and Lady Macbeth with himself, and as his classmates question whether Macbeth deserves to die, Andy applies the same question to himself, wondering whether he deserves to die for killing Robbie. Thus, for Andy, the positive things that surround him cannot mitigate the depression he experiences.