Doll Bones

The real world and the trio’s world of make believe collide. Proof that Eleanor Kerchner’s spirit inhabits the doll becomes undeniable. With the existence of magic, Zach feels a renewed sense of hope. He realizes that “maybe not everyone ha[s] to have a story like his father’s, a story like the kind all the adults he [knows] [tell], one about giving up and growing bitter” (85).

This section explores The Formative Nature of Play. When under the pressure of time constraints, Zach channels his inner William the Blade to steal a dinghy. He knows about sailing from researching his character. He applies his knowledge to captaining the boat, showing how play can be useful in real-life situations. The stolen boat’s name, the Pearl, reflects how Zach has stepped into William the Blade’s shoes. Outside of playing William’s character, Zach feels uncertain and self-conscious. As William, he becomes confident and brave. In this way, Black shows how games and storytelling can help a child overcome insecurity.

Eleanor’s quest forces Zach to face complex and thought-provoking questions. Zach steals the boat to help his friends, but it’s not a simple choice. When William the Blade robbed people, he had a good excuse because his victims were “bad guys,” but “in real life, excuses [feel] different” (112). The trio realize that there are experiences in life that resemble make-believe quests. These facilitate growth, but in ways they’re unable to fully grasp in play.

Up until this point, Zach has been viewing Eleanor’s quest in the same way he views their make-believe adventures. When he wakes up near the woods on their first night to find their camp unexplainably trashed and the Queen lying beside him, things change. He “realize[s] that it still [does] feel like an adventure—maybe even more than it had before—just not the same kind of adventure” (85). Zach recognizes that real-life adventures and actual stakes are just as invigorating and rewarding as the ones in play. This foreshadows the final conversation in the novel between Zach, Poppy, and Alice, where the friends discuss how their storytelling will not end but evolve.

As the novel approaches its climax, the trio begin fighting and facing more and more obstacles along their journey. Black suggests that friendship can help children deal with challenges. Alice and Zach consider giving up several times, but loyalty to their friend group motivates them to keep going. When Eleanor’s ghost is revealed to be real, Alice reaches her lowest point, wondering why her “own dead parents can’t be bothered to come back and haunt [her]” (120). This helps explain Alice’s hostile and defensive behavior throughout the quest. Instead of providing escapism, the quest reminds Alice of wounds in her life that she yearns to avoid.

As they’re thwarted at every turn, Zach readies himself for failure. In all his role-playing games, Zach only focuses on the characters who succeed. The very real stakes of this quest for Eleanor prompt him to, for the first time, wonder about “all the people who’d gone before those heroes […] if there was a point where they realized they weren’t going to make it, weren’t going to beat those long odds—that in the legend that would follow, they were going to be the nameless people that failed” (103-04). Failing now feels like Zach’s final goodbye to childhood and to playing with Poppy and Alice. To him, failure will force him to grow up for good and never look back, which he isn’t ready to do.