The Family Upstairs

The four children living in the Chelsea house in the late 1980s and early 1990s—Henry, Lucy, Phin, and Clemency—endure immense trauma. Once David Thomsen becomes the self-appointed leader of the house, he implements harmful rules, such as forbidding the children to go outside, underfeeding them, and locking them in their bedrooms as punishment. This trauma affects the characters well into adulthood. As an adult, the truth of Lucy’s past “jangled at her nerves, squeezed at her stomach muscles, played drums on her heart, taunted her in her dreams, sickened her when she awoke, and kept her from sleeping when she closed her eyes at night” (222). This quote indicates the extent of Lucy’s trauma, and how it even affects her physical health as an adult.

Reflecting on his own trauma, Henry acknowledges that oftentimes people don’t realize the extent of their trauma while they are experiencing it. It’s easy to look back and say how things should have gone differently, but by the time Henry and the other children had been living under David’s watch for several years, they’d become accustomed to his mistreatment of them. As an adult, Henry reflects on the time David locked him in his bedroom as punishment. Henry thinks,

Since we already spent most of our free time in our rooms, this didn’t at first feel quite as sinister as it looks written down like this. It’s very strange, looking back, how accepting children can be of the oddest scenarios. But still, seeing it now, in black and white, it really is quite shocking (195).

Henry is horrified by the way he was treated as a child. Finally, Henry realized he would have to take extreme measures in order to escape their situation at the Chelsea house. This causes Henry to poison his father, Martina, and David, and kill Birdie in order to allow himself and the other children to escape. Henry reflects, “Looking back on it there were so many other ways to have got through the trauma of it all, but with all the people I loved most in the world facing away from me I chose the worst possible option” (274). With nowhere else to turn, Henry turned to drastic measures to plan his escape. Henry acknowledges that the trauma of his situation led him to take such dangerous and deadly measures. It is easy to think back and wish different choices had been made, but when someone is undergoing extreme trauma, they sometimes have to make difficult decisions.