56 pages • 1 hour read
Lynda Mullaly HuntShouting at the Rain
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Importance of Friendship and Family
Content Warning: This section references drug and alcohol addiction.
The importance of the love and support of friends and family is central to Shouting at the Rain. The main conflicts in the novel surround the relationships between friends and family, such as the conflict between Delsie, Tressa, and Brandy; even the primary internal conflict—Delsie’s struggle to understand why her mother abandoned her—reflects this theme. Through both negative examples (e.g., Brandy and Tressa’s cruelty) and positive ones (e.g., the care of Grammy, Ronan, and Delsie’s neighbors), Delsie learns that family and friendship are not simply matters of blood relation or habit, and she comes to value the love she has.
Delsie begins the novel with deep, unresolved grief over her mother’s absence. She fears her mother’s abandonment was a rejection of her, and she feels nothing can replace her mother. These feelings intensify when her friend Brandy abandons her as well: Delsie feels uncared for and experiences a strong sense of desolation. However, Delsie soon meets and befriends Ronan, in whom she recognizes a mutual love for the sea and a similar internal struggle, as he too was left behind by his mother. Delsie also comes to realize that she has true friends in Aimee and Michael, who refuse to betray Delsie in the face of Tressa’s cruelty. Grammy’s advice that Delsie share her feelings only with those who care about her becomes a major goal for Delsie, and one she ultimately achieves. She stops caring about Tressa’s cruelty and Brandy’s unfaithfulness and spends more time with Ronan and her neighbors.
Recognizing who her true friends are goes hand in hand with recognizing the depth of the love she receives from others. While Delsie spends much of the novel longing for the love of her mother, she eventually realizes that Grammy has become her stand-in parent, caring for her when she is ill and imparting valuable life lessons. She also discovers that she can experience real familial love from people she does not share a biological connection with, like the Laskos. For instance, Esme shows Delsie the depth of her love by giving her nourishing tea, and she refers to it indirectly when she talks about how elephants form family units with non-relatives. Similarly, Ronan shows his love for Delsie by jumping into the water after her when they think they see a great white. The novel ends with Delsie’s recognition of being loved, signifying love’s importance to Delsie’s character growth.
The Complexity of Human Emotions and Character
Part of Delsie’s character arc is learning that feelings can be complex and that people can have multiple facets. Madame Schofield’s advice that Michael access the darker parts of himself for his performance is the first major reference to this theme, and her admonition echoes whenever Delsie realizes that someone is not what they appear to be. For instance, cranky Olive shows a softer side to herself when she mumbles an apology for being “mean,” and Delsie later learns that Olive misses her family and struggles to show her feelings, even envying Esme’s ability to show affection. This serves as a major moment of growth for Delsie, as she realizes that people’s exteriors can hide completely unexpected emotions and ways of thinking. Ronan and his father, Gusty, are similarly misunderstood. Many people believe Ronan to be a dishonest thief, but Delsie learns that Ronan has adopted his dark exterior in response to his abandonment by his mother. Ronan himself learns that his father’s brusqueness stems from an inability to show affection rather than a lack of it.
Delsie is herself a complex character who often expresses the complicated nature of her emotions through metaphors evoking the weather, at one point likening herself to a cloud accumulating molecules and about to storm. As this image suggests, Delsie has multiple emotional outbursts, such as when she throws her mother’s picture or when she vents to Aimee about how it feels to be an orphan. To grow, Delsie needs to learn not only that people may have hidden sides but also that they may be mysterious even to themselves. It is normal and even healthy, she discovers, to feel a complex range of emotions. Once Delsie realizes this, she convinces Grammy to accept her own complicated feelings. Grammy initially struggles to tell Delsie the truth about Mellie and plans to sell Papa Joseph’s treasures, all because of the sadness she feels when remembering them. Through Delsie’s example, Grammy learns that memories can evoke multiple emotions and that one should embrace these rather than deny them.
This newfound ability to embrace complexity allows Delsie to make peace with her abandonment. She realizes that her mother loved her but struggled with addiction; in fact, her mother left her precisely because she loved her. Similarly, Delsie can miss her mother but appreciate the love of others. Allowing room for the messiness of real life makes Delsie a more open, compassionate, and well-rounded person.
The Importance of Changing Perspective
The most significant change Delsie undergoes is realizing the importance of perspective and having a positive outlook on life. The title of Shouting at the Rain references this theme: When the Reel of Fortune is beached, Henry says that there is “no use shouting at the rain” (141)—i.e., getting upset at something that can’t be changed. They must simply wait for the wind and waves to return the boat to the water.
Delsie feels unlucky for having been abandoned by her mother as a baby and for being an “orphan,” as Aimee describes her. Tressa’s bullying and Brandy’s unfaithfulness also influence how Delsie sees herself, with Tressa making her feel as if she is immature and uncouth. However, by pointing out the blessings in Delsie’s life, many characters, from Grammy to Henry to Esme and even Olive, help Delsie to see that she is not abandoned but loved, with a supportive surrogate family of Grammy and her neighbors and friends. Delsie also gains perspective on Brandy and Tressa’s behavior, realizing that she does not need to subject herself to their cruelty and thoughtlessness, as exemplified when she tells the girl at the beach to dig herself out of the hole. Most importantly, Delsie and Ronan both learn from Henry that they should view themselves as survivors rather than victims—a lesson that Delsie embraces at the end of the novel. Though aspects of their lives may be genuinely unfortunate, brooding over them does nothing. Negativity does not fix what can’t be changed, but it can worsen things further by trapping people in unproductive patterns of behavior (e.g., the various ways in which Ronan acts out).
The theme of changing perspective overlaps with the theme of the complexity of human emotions and character. For instance, the change Delsie inspires in Grammy has as much to do with shifting perspective as it does with embracing life’s messiness: Delsie helps Grammy to see the happy memories of Mellie and Papa Joseph rather than focusing merely on the pain of their loss. Ultimately, this change of perspective allows characters to heal and better relate to one another, mending rifts between characters as well as characters’ inner conflicts. Changing perspective thus emerges as the primary moral of the story, which encourages readers to approach their lives with optimism and a sense of what they have rather than what they lack.
Related Titles
By Lynda Mullaly Hunt
