The Summer of the Swans

“There was something similar about them in that moment, the same oval face, round brown eyes, brown hair hanging over the forehead, freckles on the nose. Then Charlie glanced up and the illusion was broken.”

Chapter 2 is one of the few that depicts Charlie’s perspective. In Charlie’s chapters, Betsy Byars frequently emphasizes his sense of loneliness while in the company of other people. Though he’s able to engage and interact within his family, he still struggles to connect with them. Even Sara, his constant companion and the person with whom he shares so much, often feels removed from him. This quote indicates that Charlie himself understands this.

“It was the first time in her life that she had used the term ‘r*******’ in connection with her brother, and she looked quickly away from the figure in the white tent. Her face felt suddenly hot [...].”

In the six years Charlie was recognized as having an intellectual disability, Sara never once used the slur “r*******.” This is especially significant as at the time of the novel’s publication, such language was commonplace in both everyday speech and medical terminology. Sara only uses the term to put words in Wanda’s mouth, as though she used similar phrasing in order to so casually share Charlie’s disability with a stranger. Still, Sara feels a pang of guilt, as though she somehow betrayed her brother.

“I never get to do anything by myself I have to take him everywhere. I have him all day and Wanda all night. In all this whole house I have one drawer to myself. One drawer.”

Unlike previous summers, Sara shows resentment toward her lack of independence and privacy. She’s easily irritated, the close quarters of the Godfrey home providing a tense environment for the family of four. This quote also raises an important question: To what degree is Sara responsible for Charlie in the context of the novel?

“The whole world seemed to have been turned off when Sara went into the Weiceks’ house, and he did not move for a long time. The only sound was the ticking of his watch. The watch was a great pleasure to him.”

When Charlie is left to wait for Sara on Mary’s porch, readers get a glimpse into how he perceives the world. Charlie becomes overwhelmed in unfamiliar places, especially when facing them alone. The boy relies on his family and a semblance of routine to feel safe—his attachment to Sara being his main source of stability. Though Charlie has the ability to placate himself via tracking the repetitive movement of his watch, or by self-isolating as he did that morning in his tent, these methods are only effective for a limited amount of time.

“The first fourteen years of her life all seemed the same. She had loved her sister without envy, her aunt without finding her coarse, her brother without pity. Now all that was changed. She was filled with a discontent, an anger about herself, her life, her family, that made her think she would never be content again.”

Sara feels frustrated with her family among other people, but is not without a degree of self-awareness. She’s equally frustrated with her own feelings, knowing all too well that her ever-changing attitude is an internal matter rather than an external one. Still, she struggles to translate this understanding to action, restraint, and self-love.

“The thumping against the wall stopped, then began again. It was a sound that Sara became used to, but tonight it seemed unusually loud. She found herself thinking how this had been Charlie’s first movement after his long illness, a reckless kicking out of one foot, a weak movement then that could hardly be noticed beneath the covers, but now, tonight, one that seemed to make the whole house tremble.”

This quote serves as an example of Sara’s change in attitude since the beginning of the summer. The amplification of Charlie’s movement only exists in her mind. Sara’s reaction speaks to not only her growing frustration, but also the prominence of Charlie’s presence in her life. Sara feels that she bears most of the responsibility for Charlie; the fact that she finds the sound of his kicking to be an intrusion on her sense of peace indicates some resentment on her part for her lack of autonomy and privacy.

“Still looking for the swans, he pressed his face against the screen. The beauty of them, the white-ness, the softness, the silent splendor had impressed him greatly, and he felt a longing to be once again by the lake, sitting in the deep grass, throwing bread to the waiting swans.”

Charlie’s affinity for the swans and their calming presence catalyze his disappearance. The boy’s desire to relive his and Sara’s earlier experience is enough to disregard what he knows is expected of him and venture off on his own, despite the comfort and security he associates with home.

“In the soft darkness all the things that usually confused him—speeding bicycles, loud noises, lawn mowers, barking dogs, shouting children—were gone, replaced by silence and a silvery moonlit darkness. He seemed to belong to this silent world far more than he belonged to the daytime world of feverish activity.”

Though Charlie never strayed from home before, the calm of the night encourages him to venture past the front gate in search of the swans. This quote provides a glimpse into his perception of daytime stimuli; he’s easily overwhelmed and struggles to process the intrusive, unpredictable aspects of living in a larger community. Consistency and stability allow Charlie to feel content and safe, but he lives in a perpetual state of vulnerability to frequent interferences.

“He stood beneath the trees without moving and looked around him. He did not know where he was. He did not even know how he had come to be there. The whole night seemed one long struggle, but he could not remember why he had been struggling. He had wanted something, he could not remember what.”

Charlie forgets his mission to find the swans when he finds himself lost and alone in the woods, his disorientation being both emotional and spatial. The specifics of his cognitive impairment include impulsive behavior and memory lapses, leading to his becoming lost in the first place. He tried his best to wait for the flock, but ultimately yields to instinct, to his need for comfort.

“I’m ruined, just ruined. Why someone cannot take a perfectly good magazine picture and cut someone’s hair the same way without ruining them I cannot understand. I hope that girl fails beauty school.”

Sara agonizes over her (self-proclaimed) poorly executed haircut. She expresses a fatalistic view in which her appearance is permanently ruined, as if her hair will never grow back or can’t be changed. Sara doesn’t even consider Wanda’s later insight, that the discrepancy in her haircut lies with her and the woman in her reference photo looking different. This quote typifies Sara’s tendency to blame others and wish consequences on them should they treat her unfairly.

“I was so sure he’d be here. […] I wasn’t even worried because I knew he would be sitting right here. Now, I don’t know what to do.”

Sara is initially unconcerned about locating Charlie as he never strays far from home, and there’s no indication that he’d go anywhere other than the lake. Sara believes that she shares an intuitive connection with her brother, that she can anticipate his behavior. In his absence, she’s perplexed at the discrepancy between an instinct she long relied on and the fact that it failed her.

“It gave Sara a sick feeling to see it because something about the picture, the small-ness, the unfinished quality, made it look somehow very much like Charlie.”

After Charlie goes missing, Sara notices a self-portrait he drew, one with disproportionate and incomplete features. She’s saddened by its accuracy. Sara snapped at Charlie prior to his disappearance, a testament to her frustration—but as the novel progresses, her desire to protect him proves stronger. The likeness between Charlie’s self-portrait and Sara’s perception of him speak to his being vulnerable, of needing her more than ever.

“When Sara looked at those early pictures, she remembered a laughing man with black curly hair and a broken tooth who had lived with them for a few short golden years and then had gone away. There was no connection at all between this laughing man in the photograph album and the gray sober man who worked in Ohio and came home to West Virginia on occasional weekends, who sat in the living room and watched baseball or football on television and never started a conversation on his own.”

Sara’s detachment from her father, Sam, can be traced to his working long distance after his wife’s death and Charlie’s illness. Sara feels that his distancing himself is for his own sake and not out of necessity. Despite the fact that Sam visits the family, Sara doesn’t recognize him as the father, the man, he once was. This is an aspect of the past of which Sara lacks details, her newfound self-centered position preventing her from considering his side of the story.

“For some reason she was not as sure about Joe Melby as she had been before, and this was even more disturbing. He did take the watch, she said to herself. She could not bear to think that she had been mistaken in this, that she had taken revenge on the wrong person.”

Over the course of the novel, Sara’s suspicions of classmate Joe Melby give way to doubt. The sincerity with which Joe attests to his innocence in the watch incident resonates with Sara, his desire to help search for Charlie a welcome comfort. While Sara has no qualms about taking revenge on those who wrong Charlie, she’s not without compassion; she detests the idea that she punished someone unfairly. In Joe’s case, she’s willing to take responsibility should she prove wrong.

“I can’t help myself. When I think somebody has done something mean to Charlie, I can’t forgive them. I want to keep after them and keep after them just like Aunt Willie said. I even sort of suspected Joe Melby didn’t take that watch and I still kept on.”

Sara’s love for Charlie manifests as the ferocity (and hint of pride) with which she defends him. But this ferocity both deters potential friends and takes a toll on her relationship with Charlie himself. Sara finds herself increasingly irritated, impatient, even resentful of her brother in ways she didn’t before—but overall, her actions come from a good place.

“I just know. There’s something about me that makes me understand Charlie. It’s like I know how he feels about things. Like sometimes I’ll be walking down the street and I’ll pass the jeweler’s and I’ll think that if Charlie were here he would want to stand right there and look at those watches all afternoon and I know right where he’d stand and how he’d put his hands up on the glass and how his face would look. And yesterday I knew he was going to love the swans to much that he wasn’t ever going to want to leave. I know how he feels.”

Despite Charlie being absent at the lake, Sara is still confident that she can find him. She’s certain that he won’t be drawn to the collapsed mine as others suspect, and she predicts that he’ll shy away from the large crowds of volunteer searchers sweeping the wilderness (which later proves correct). Sara’s bond with her brother is an integral part of her identity, the thought of him being in danger reigniting her commitment to him.

“Suddenly, something seemed to explode within Charlie, and he began to cry noisily. He threw himself on the bank and began kicking, flailing at the ground, at the invisible chipmunk, at the silent watch. He wailed, yielding in helplessness to his anguish, and his piercing screams, uttered again and again, seemed to hang in the air so that they overlapped. His fingers tore at the tree roots and dug beneath the leaves and scratched, animal-like, at the dark earth.”

Getting lost in the woods is a harrowing experience for Charlie—made all the more distressing and frightening as he has difficulty orienting himself in unfamiliar places. He struggles with patience and problem-solving, so he’s unable to assess his situation and decide his next course of action. Charlie made a significant effort to press on despite his disorientation and physical exhaustion, but in this moment he reaches his limit.

“She suddenly wanted to see her brother so badly that her throat began to close. It was a tight feeling that she got sometimes when she wanted something, like the time she had the measles and wanted to see her father so much she couldn’t even swallow. Now she thought that if she had a whole glass of ice water—and was thirsty—she probably would not be able to drink a single drop.”

Sara experiences various stages of emotion throughout Charlie’s disappearance. With Joe’s ability to navigate the woods, Sara travels farther in her search than she was able to alone—but the farther they travel, the more her dread grows. She appreciates the vastness of the surrounding landscape, but in doing so, realizes how challenging their search will be. Sara’s mention of her father speaks to her desperation; it also indicates that her earlier animosity was likely grounded in pain rather than resentment in itself.

“She waited for the hot tears that had come so often this summer, the tears that had seemed so close only a moment before. Now her eyes remained dry. I have cried over myself a hundred times this summer, she thought, I have wept over my big feet and my skinny legs and my nose, I have even cried over my stupid shoes, and now when I have a true sadness there are no tears left.”

In this moment, Sara experiences a tremendous shift in perspective in which her priorities align. She begins to see the triviality of her recent preoccupation with her own concerns as these things are inconsequential in comparison to Charlie’s disappearance. She finally understands the gravity of the situation, and is instead, too shocked to react.

“His whole life had been built on a strict routine, and as long as this routine was kept up, he felt safe and well. […] But always there could be the unexpected, the dreadful surprise that would topple his carefully constructed life in an instant.”

Charlie is doted upon by his family. He’s constantly supervised and attended to, but even in such a supportive environment, he remains vulnerable. It’s inevitable that the boy will face obstacles to his sense of peace throughout life, his responses being unique to his mental state.

“He opened his eyes and as he saw Sara a strange expression came over his face, an expression of wonder and joy and disbelief, and Sara knew that if she lived to be a hundred no one would ever look at her quite that way again.”

Sara seeks autonomy and independence from her family, these desires often giving way to resentment of her role as Charlie’s primary caretaker. The more she struggles with her emotions, the more she feels the weight of his needs. But upon their reunion, Sara realizes that Charlie’s love for her, in its genuine and unconditional depth, is to be treasured—and that she reciprocates it.

“Sara could not understand why she suddenly felt so good. It was a puzzle. The day before she had been miserable. She had wanted to fly away from everything, like the swans to a new lake, and now she didn’t want that any more.”

Sara spent her summer enveloped in her own concerns, distracted by the impulse to criticize and find fault with herself and others. She felt alienated, misunderstood, and taken advantage of. But over the course of roughly 24 hours, her understanding of herself, her family, and the larger community takes a turn for the better, and she considers her circumstances from a new perspective.

“The swans were directly overhead, flying with outstretched necks, their long wings beating the air, an awkward blind sort of flight. They were so low that she thought they might hit the trees, but at the last moment they pulled up and skimmed the air just above the treetops. […] It seemed urgent that Charlie somehow see the swans once again.”

The swans’ departure marks the end of their visit to the lake near the Godfrey home—and because Sara knows that they won’t see them again unless they seek them out at the university—she urges Charlie to look up. This, once again, speaks to Sara’s love for her brother. She wishes to grant Charlie this small consolation knowing the swans were his reason to leave in the first place—but he himself no longer remembers, absorbed in the security of being back home.