Catalyst

Kate literally lacks vision—her Kate’s poor eyesight reflects her narrow vision of the world. Anderson uses the imagery of glasses, contacts, and even sunglasses to reflect Kate’s evolution into adulthood and her ability to see those around her in clearer focus. Kate opts to run without her glasses and gets lost in the woods during a critical cross-country meet; the sculpture in the school lobby is festooned with cut-out eyes; Teri loses her glasses in the cafeteria fight, and it is Kate who retrieves them. All these different eyes represent multiple perspectives; people do not only see in one way. Kate is fitted with new contacts that give her “magic eyes,” symbolizing corrected vision. The moment glasses are lost or misplaced suggests limited vision; the moment they are returned symbolizes an expanded point of view.

Acute vision can initially bring difficulty. As Kate’s new contacts sit uncomfortably in her eyes, the world is suddenly in much sharper focus. This unsettles her: “I walk out of the store and clutch a concrete post. The light is blinding, screaming off the windshields and the metal cars, amplified by the white stucco walls of the shopping center” (110). Her vision before, though limited, was comfortable. Her eyes had adjusted to a familiar, if incomplete, perspective of the world.

Kate’s “magic eyes” foreshadow her emotionally painful epiphany in the diner. Initially, Kate thinks she is having problems from her contacts: “I blink, trying to moisten my contacts. But as I open my eyes, it’s like I’m rocketing through space” (226). In her evolving friendship with Teri, Kate sees things more clearly.

Kate watches art students shaping a statue, a “giant stick figure with two metal legs, a pole for the body, and two long arms thrust in the air” (75). It is, Kate knows, an annual project by the senior class art students—whom she dismissively calls “art elves” (75). Kate watches the art teacher bring in a half dozen plastic bins, which Kate thinks are “filled with junk” (75). As Kate considers her bleak future, the students happily glue things of consequence only to high school students—notebooks, chess pieces, anti-gravity pens, hall passes, test tubes, even crayons and erasers. For Kate, the monument to high school, despite the earnest dedication of the art students, seems a worthless mess. She mockingly calls it “Frankenstudent” (78).

The statue that the art students create in the school lobby symbolizes many facets of young adult life. Kate, simmering in her anger, dismisses the project as amateurish and sloppy. This reflects the hardness of her heart, her indifference to her classmates and their world. When the art students glue a dark red and shiny realistic heart to the statue’s chest, Kate cynically figures that “will be the first thing that gets ripped off” (78).

Her reaction marks an emotional low point. She shows how shut-down her heart is, how emotionally narrow her compassion is, and, most important, how much potential she has for growth.

When Kate’s substitute teacher shows Alice in Wonderland, Kate admits she has always liked the animated classic: “Disney is our collective stepparent, the nice one who tells us bedtime stories and bakes cupcakes” (67). In fairy tales, the stepparent is often abusive. In reality, biological parents can also be cruel or absent or, like Kate’s father, too busy to spend time with their children. Kate’s remark reflects her need to be cared for and hints at emotional trauma from her mother’s death.

Alice in Wonderland also symbolizes Kate’s transition from the comfortable illusions of childhood into the confusing realities of the adult world. When she receives her rejection letter from MIT, she wishes she could shrink like Alice and hide in her locker. In this, Kate reveals how little she understands about Alice’s transformation. All the physical changes that Alice undergoes in Wonderland symbolize her transition into adulthood. In the fairy tale, Alice learns to navigate the absurdity of the world and the absence of any kind of logic or cause-and-effect. This is the lesson that Kate will learn in her own way.

Kate thinks about Alice’s predicament. After following the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole and struggling to adjust to every new and crazy reality, Alice “winds up a stranger in a strange land” (67). The film foreshadows Kate’s rejection from MIT. When Kate’s father appears at the classroom door with the letter, Kate, reeling from the news, feels as if she is tumbling: “Kate in Wonderland, off with her head” (73). She hopes, in vain, that the real letter, the acceptance letter, will somehow magically materialize like the Cheshire Cat. But Kate is through the looking glass; everything she assumed to be reality is no longer viable, and there is no Disney magic to fix it.