Things Not Seen

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2002

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-8

Chapters 9-17

Chapters 18-28

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

How to Be Seen While Invisible

Both Bobby and Alicia see themselves as invisible: Alicia, because her friends disappeared when she became blind, and Bobby, because he really is invisible. It takes a willingness from each of them to reach out to the world that enables them to discover that they really can be seen.

Bobby goes through life feeling invisible to the people who matter to him. His parents make decisions for him without consulting him; they’re busy with their careers and often seem to hurry past without paying attention to him. Popular kids at school ignore him, and, aside from a few people, he largely gives up on making more friends. He hangs back and deplores the people who don’t care enough to know him.

Then he becomes literally invisible, and his problem intensifies. Now others can’t see him at all; even if they could, they’d be entranced by and seek to exploit his strange power. They still wouldn’t pay attention to him as a person. For a while, Bobby enjoys spying on people who normally wouldn’t give him the time of day. He becomes fascinated by how people behave when they don’t know they’re being observed. Free to stare at them all he wants, he notices little things about them. His parents, for example, turn out to be vibrant and very human when he watches them at home, and his fondness for them, long hidden, blooms anew.

Alicia loses her popularity when she becomes blind. Her friends mostly abandon her, and other people tend to avoid her. The loneliness she feels is almost overwhelming: “It’s like I disappeared along with the whole rest of the world” (107).

When she meets Bobby, she realizes that they both feel the same way about themselves. This helps her to understand that she’s been wallowing in self-pity. She wants to reach out, to return to the world of people, and she starts by caring about Bobby and doing what she can to help him. Though she shares his sensitivity to criticism and defensive sarcasm, Alicia realizes that they both struggle with loneliness and that it’s wiser to express that understanding. The two kids seem to learn this together, as if they’re teaching it to one another.

As they learn how to get along and how to support each other, their confidence grows. Tasked with distracting employees at Sears while Bobby sneaks into an office to obtain vital information on his condition, Alicia asks for information about employment opportunities for people with disabilities. She ends up in a conference with people from the human resources department. Although she feels a little lonely afterward, the experience bolsters her self-confidence, and it shatters her glib assumption that no one wants her around.

Bobby becomes visible again. He contacts the one other invisible person that he knows, Sheila Borden, and offers to help her become visible again too, but she turns him down. Unlike Bobby and Alicia, Sheila takes comfort in her invisibility; she sees it as a form of freedom. Still, Bobby mails her his blanket and the research materials, just in case she changes her mind. He then goes to Alicia’s house. She touches his face, wanting to know what everyone else can now see. She fears Bobby will leave her now that her help is no longer needed, but Bobby has become more than physically visible—he also feels visible to himself. He knows he wants to have Alicia in his life, and he’s willing to declare that to her directly.

In reaching out to each other, Bobby and Alicia also reach out to themselves and bring out from their own hearts qualities that prove they’re much more than invisible people. They matter to their families and to each other, and their compassion shines brightly. They become beacons that everyone can’t help but see.

Noticing What Goes Unseen

There is something that escapes everyone’s notice until Bobby decides to search for it: the cure to Bobby’s invisibility. Bobby embarks on a quest that turns up a series of clues that lead to the solution. In the process, he finds remarkable things he would never have otherwise noticed.

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, detective Sherlock Holmes says that “The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes” (Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Hound of the Baskervilles. George Newnes Ltd, 1902). Bobby, who admires Sherlock Holmes—a man of action as well as thought—decides that sitting around and waiting for fate to decide his future, isn’t good enough, so he decides to do some detective work.

His inventory of items from his bedroom and bathroom forms a database that permits David and Leo to narrow in on his electric blanket. When the two dads hit a dead end in their research, Bobby realizes there are more sources of clues than the blanket. His own research—with Alicia’s invaluable help—leads him to discover hundreds of customer complaints, which in turn leads him to Sheila Borden, another person who turned invisible after using the blanket years earlier. This information helps Alicia’s father discover that Bobby and Sheila’s incidents both occurred during solar energy storms. Since the second storm is still active, Alicia suggests that Bobby use the blanket again; this restores Bobby’s invisibility.

Bobby’s abrupt disappearance from school garners the attention of Ms. Pagett the truancy officer, who grows more and more suspicious as time passes with no sign of Bobby. Without Bobby’s methodical, deliberate search for clues, the story would have ended in tragedy. Bobby’s parents likely would have been arrested—or they would have been forced to reveal Bobby’s condition, which would have led to the government taking Bobby away. Because Bobby looked at things no one else paid attention to, things that bore scrutiny even if they were unlikely to contribute to the solution, he found the solution and restored his visibility just in time to prevent disaster.

Bobby’s decision to pay attention and observe also nets him something equally wonderful: his friendship with Alicia. As an invisible person, Bobby must look at the world differently. His presence a secret, he can observe other people all he wants, and he learns to see them in new ways. He begins by watching his parents, whom he realizes are actual human beings with hopes and fears that he can relate to, and this discovery improves greatly his understanding and compassion for them.

He does the same when he meets Alicia. The details of her facial expressions, and the subtleties of her thoughts and feelings endear her to him. Paying close attention to her makes her more important to him, and it honors her as a person in ways long abandoned by her old friends. She’s someone he wants to learn about and loves to be with. Were he still visible, it’s unlikely he’d know her at all, let alone pay such close attention to her.

Attention, observation, and careful study of things that most people normally wouldn’t even glance at brings Bobby great rewards. In doing so, he transcends his old social and mental blindness and opens his eyes wide to discoveries around him that, all along, were just waiting to be seen.

Bringing Strengths to a Group Effort

Each of the members of the Phillips and Van Dorn families has a distinct weakness but also a definite strength. Bobby’s sudden invisibility forces all of them to set aside their liabilities and bring forward their best traits to help solve the problem. In the process, they all learn to work as a team and rekindle their fondness for their own family members.

Bobby doesn’t get along well with his parents. He’s a bit of a rebel, and he resents their intrusiveness and their strong disapproval of his mediocre school performance. He calls himself his mom’s “big disappointment,” and he often snaps at them both, even when they mean him no disrespect. His parents work hard and are highly successful, and their busy schedules often conflict with their son’s needs. They tend to lecture Bobby, and they make decisions about him without consulting him. Though they love him, they often behave as if he’s not quite up to their standards.

Alicia, who lost her sight in an accident, also lost most of her social connections. She has gone through a lot of grieving, and her attitude toward others has hardened: She feels invisible to them. She’s also angry that her parents seem to regard her as broken: “Now I’m a big job, a job they can’t get rid of even if they wanted to” (106). Her dad, Leo, an astrophysicist, can get very intense and focused on his work, tuning out his family; he can also be nosy. Her mom, Julia, worries a lot about appearances and fears she’s not good enough for her husband’s scholarly world. When Bobby meets her, Alicia proves even more touchy than he is, easily insulted and driven to sarcasm. It’s a lesson for Bobby about his own attitude.

When he becomes invisible, Bobby must pay attention to the world in a different way. He observes everything more carefully, including his parents, and finds they’re not nearly as bad as he thought. After the car accident, his parents are reminded that they could lose him altogether, and they redouble their efforts to care for him. They listen to him more carefully and take his concerns into account. He, in turn, learns to cut them some slack when they say or do things that normally would set him off. This process is rocky at first, but the family begins to heal and grow closer.

While invisible, Bobby could not attend school even if he wanted to. He’s gone for so long that, if he doesn’t report back soon, his parents will face serious legal problems. Bobby’s mom, an experienced warrior for women’s rights, holds the truancy department at bay long enough for the others to find workarounds to Bobby’s plight. Her commanding demeanor, which for years irritated Bobby, suddenly transforms into a powerful weapon in the fight to protect the Phillips family from looming disaster.

Bobby and Alicia’s fathers join up, apply their powerful scientific skills to the problem, and quickly find a root cause in Bobby’s electric blanket. When they reach a dead end in their research, Bobby and Alicia—both smart, well-read, and inquisitive—pick up the slack by obtaining a list of people who had poor experiences with his brand of blanket. Bobby locates one who, like himself, became invisible. The information he obtains about her case helps Leo connect the dots between the blanket’s electromagnetic field and solar storms. Alicia adds the finishing touch by suggesting that Bobby experiment with the blanket, and his re-use of the item cures his invisibility.

Alicia’s mom finds room in her heart for Bobby’s unusual relationship with Alicia. She helps nurture their friendship, and when Alicia tries to push him away, she offers wisdom to Bobby that helps him find a way to break the impasse between him and Alicia.

From bickering and resentment to respect and love, the Phillips and Van Dorns transform their families as they turn a crisis into an opportunity. They rebuild frayed relationships into strong and dedicated ones by setting aside their weaknesses for the strengths that solve the invisibility problem. It’s a group effort that brings out the best in each of them.