Tag: ….

fuzzballsheltiepants:

Sometimes I like to torture myself by thinking of that time in The Foxhole Court when they’re playing the first game against Breckenridge and Andrew says to Neil,  “‘Hey, Pinocchio,’… ‘This one’s for you.’”

When I first read that, I thought it was Andrew referring to Neil being a liar.  But looking back, I realized it’s more than that: Neil at the beginning of the story is not a real boy.  He’s a puppet–of his mother, his father, his own need to survive even if that means he doesn’t really live–who has spent years not able to be a real person.  He doesn’t even cry when he burns his mother’s body, unable to let himself feel real emotions.  And Pinocchio in the book even changes his identity several times, much as Neil does. 

It fucks me up that Andrew recognizes this at the beginning.  It’s not just that he knows Neil is a liar; it’s that he knows Neil is struggling between staying a puppet and becoming real.  He keeps trying to give Neil incentive to stay and make himself live: the keys, the shared cigarettes, the shared truths, being willing to be someone Neil leans on but not someone who pulls his strings.  Andrew is not Geppetto; he’s The Fairy With Turquoise Hair, the one to whom Neil promises to become real and the one who makes him real in the end.

Over the course of the books, with the support and belief of the Foxes, and with his own determination to take a stand and plant his feet for the people he cares about, Neil becomes his true self.  He becomes able to feel, to love, and that love turns him real.  And it is Andrew, in the end, who tells him that yes, he can leave Nathaniel Wesninski–the puppet–behind and become Neil Josten, the real boy.