Summary: Chapter 139
Christopher describes photographs taken in 1917 that appear to show live
fairies. The incident was dubbed “The Case of the Cottingley Fairies,” and Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, endorsed the photographs
as proof of the existence of fairies. In actuality, the fairies shown were just cut
outs, which the photographers admitted in 1981. Christopher explains Occam’s razor,
a law that says “no more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely
necessary.” To Christopher, this means that murderers tend to know their victims,
fairies don’t exist, and you can’t talk to the dead.
Summary: Chapter 149
At school, Siobhan asks Christopher why his face is bruised. He explains the
fight with Father. Siobhan reluctantly accepts that nothing happened worth worrying
over, largely because Christopher cannot remember whether or not Father hit him.
Christopher returns from school before Father gets home from work. Christopher
gets the key to the garden from the china pot and sets out to retrieve his book.
When he doesn’t find his book in the trashcan, he realizes Father might have hidden
it elsewhere in the house. He eventually discovers the book in a shirt box
underneath a toolbox in Father’s bedroom closet. Though happy that Father hasn’t
thrown his book away, he worries that Father will know he has been searching through
his things. Just then, Father comes home. Christopher rushes to put everything back
the way he found it. At the last moment he notices a letter in the shirt box
addressed to him and sees there are several such letters. He takes one of the
letters, puts his book back, and tiptoes back to his room.
Later, Father makes dinner, then begins to set up shelves in the living room.
Christopher uses the opportunity to read the letter alone in his room. The letter is
from Mother, and it describes a new job she has working as a secretary in a factory.
She tells of the apartment that she has moved into in London with a man named Roger
and notes that she has not received any letters back from Christopher. She says she
loves him very much anyway. The letter confuses Christopher because Mother never
worked at a factory or lived in London. The letter has no date, but on the envelope
it bears the postmark “16th of October 1997,” eighteen months after Mother died.
Christopher feels excited to have a new mystery on his hands, but he decides not to
jump to conclusions. He hides the letter and goes downstairs to watch
television.
Summary: Chapter 151
Christopher describes scientific mysteries as problems that have yet to be
solved. Christopher says ghosts are only a mystery because we do not know the
science behind them, but one day we will. He talks about the seemingly random number
of frogs in the pond at school from year to year and notes that a formula,
discovered by a group of scientists, shows that the population density of frogs runs
in predictable cycles that only appear random. Christopher concludes that sometimes
complex problems follow simple rules, and that whole populations can die out for no
reason other than the way the numbers work.
Analysis: Chapters 139-151
Christopher’s discovery of the letter from Mother adds a dramatic twist to the
plot and reveals another secret that Father had kept from Christopher. The letter
initially confuses Christopher because it contains facts about Mother’s life working
at a factory in London, although to Christopher’s knowledge Mother had never worked
at a factory or lived in London. The postmark dates the letter to several months
after Mother’s supposed death, leading Christopher, who evidently doesn’t consider
that Mother might not be dead, to question how this scenario could have occurred. He
wonders if perhaps the letter was in the wrong envelope, and he even speculates
somewhat comically that it could be a letter to a different Christopher from that
Christopher’s mother. The reaction creates an irony in which the reader, unlike
Christopher, realizes that the letter suggests Mother never died at all, and that
Father has likely been lying about this fact as well. Before Christopher considers
this possibility, however, he decides not to jump to conclusions without more
information, implying that he will soon undertake a new investigation.
Notably, Christopher precedes and follows his discovery of the letter from
Mother with thoughts on the supernatural and a discussion of Occam’s razor,
appearing to comment on his own reaction to Mother’s letter. Before finding the
letter, Christopher talks about “The Case of the Cottingley Fairies,” noting with
disappointment the variety of people who believed the picture of the fairies to be
legitimate. For Christopher, the Cottingley fairies case proves the principle of
Occam’s razor, which suggests that the simplest explanation tends to be the correct
one. When Christopher finds Mother’s letter, however, he avoids the simplest
explanation—that Mother didn’t die as Father said she did. Christopher instead
thinks up different reasons a letter from Mother would bear a postmark from after
her death, even entertaining the outlandish notion that the letter is actually to
another Christopher. He willfully evades the possibility that Mother is alive. Yet
talking about the Cottingley fairies and Occam’s razor, Christopher remarks that
people do not always believe the obvious explanation because they “want to be stupid
and they do not want to know the truth.” Christopher’s digressions into these other
subjects draw attention to the discrepancy between his beliefs and his reaction to
the letter. Like the people he calls “stupid,” Christopher may not want to know the
truth, because it may be too uncomfortable to bear. If his mother is alive, it would
mean a new set of uncertainties for Christopher to deal with—for instance, where is
his mother? why hasn’t he heard from her? should he find her?—and it would mean that
Christopher’s father lied to him, suggesting that Christopher doesn’t know his
father as well as he thinks. Rather than deal with these possibilities, Christopher
manufactures other, more complicated explanations. Whether this explanation is
accurate, or whether Christopher genuinely doesn’t make the connection between his
mother’s letters and her being alive, remains unclear, however.
Christopher’s talk of ghosts and the seemingly random fluctuations in frog
populations also appear to comment on this new mystery regarding Mother, but this
discussion emphasizes Christopher’s belief that logic and careful thinking can find
a rational explanation for any mystery. Christopher, who talks about his uncle’s
sighting of a ghost in a shopping center, doesn’t deny the existence of ghosts, he
just believes a scientific explanation for them exists. He compares ghosts to the
changes in frog populations, which initially seem random but actually follow a
predictable cycle. Similarly, scientists need only to discover the laws that allow
ghosts to exist. The fact that Christopher’s thoughts on ghosts, supposedly the
spiritual remains of dead people, follow just after he finds the letter from Mother,
whom he thought was dead, suggests that Christopher sees some link between the two.
Similarly, his belief that an explanation for ghosts exists, but it just hasn’t yet
been discovered, implies that Christopher feels an explanation for Mother’s letter
exists. He just needs to find out what that explanation is.
