The Man Who Loved Clowns

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying, ableism, and death.

“Punky had come rushing toward us in his eagerness to play, and the girl had taken one look at his dwarflike body and his child-man face and run screaming from the house in terror.”

The only time Delrita ever brought home a friend to play, she realized that some people are afraid of Punky. She finds that if they’re not afraid of him, they laugh at him. This draws a parallel between Punky and his number one obsession—clowns. Clowns symbolize Punky’s childlike nature, and, like Punky, people tend to find clowns either scary or entertaining. This scene is one of the foundations of Delrita’s bias that everyone is prejudiced against people with disabilities, a perspective that will be challenged and overturned throughout the novel.

“To chase away my fears, I’d think about the tree I’d once seen growing from a rock. Maybe I’d be like that tree, which stood proud and willowy after fighting its way to the sun.”

Delrita compares herself to a tree that flourishes despite growing in a difficult environment. The tree symbolizes Delrita’s journey toward growth and maturation in the face of adversity. After her parents die, Delrita struggles to make new social bonds in a town she has just recently moved to, but remembering the tree gives Delrita hope.

“‘Well—he—that fellow is different,’ she stammered pushing her long blond hair back behind her ears. 

Revelation. Columbus discovering America.”

Delrita’s classmate explains why she was staring and laughing at Punky, and Delrita sarcastically thinks that noticing Punky is “different” is a “revelation.” The use of ironic humor here underscores Delrita’s annoyance at people treating Punky as a spectacle. At the beginning of the novel, Delrita wishes that Punky’s disability was more normalized, establishing the theme of