73 pages • 2 hours read
Brian SelznickWonderstruck
Fiction | Graphic Novel/Book | YA | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Sound and Silence
The themes of sound and silence are significant not only in the content of the text, but also its form. Selznick combines image and text to create a hybrid novel that accentuates the different ways that people experience the world, particularly those with hearing disabilities.
Rose, who is deaf and mute, has a narrative that is told entirely through visual stimulus—images, written or typed notes, signage, etc. Her way of experiencing the world involves no sound or spoken text, and this also becomes Ben’s way of experiencing the world, though he can still speak. At the end of the novel, the images focus not only on Rose, but also on Ben and Jamie, who find themselves living more in Rose’s view of the world. Moments of silence, like the final moments of the novel when Ben, Rose, and Jamie watch the stars, are reflected in images to better portray the moment and its beauty.
Silent films, and Rose’s experience with them, are also an important part of this theme. Rose is devastated when she loses her connection to her mother, actress Lillian Mayhew, when movie theatres becomes “talkies.” The lack of accessibility makes Rose feel even more alone than she did before and leads her to seek connection with her mother in person, in New York City. This moment represents the significance and value of silence, particularly for the hard of hearing.
In the last few pages of the book, Selznick does something unique with his illustrations. He has Ben sign his answer, using images, without first translating the image. He does this in order to convey the importance of signing as a means of visual communication, but also to show the reader what it is like to be uncertain about what is being communicated—an experience that Rose and Ben have often in the novel. This discomfort, which is translated soon after the drawings, gives readers a sense of the world that Ben and Rose live in.
The Quest to Belong
Desire for a sense of belonging drives this novel and all the characters in it. Ben seeks belonging in the form of friends and family after his mother’s sudden death. Young Rose seeks belonging in the form of love from her parents and a life beyond the confines of her house in Hoboken. Jamie seeks belonging as the lonely, only child of divorced parents, living on his own in New York City.
For Ben, the novel begins with a focus on outer space—a symbol of his alienation and his loneliness. His Cousin Robby ruthlessly mocks him, and he has no other friends, or companions. His loneliness is only compounded when he becomes deaf and can no longer effectively communicate with those around him.
In New York, however, Ben finds a sense of belonging at last in the form of Jamie, who takes him in and respects him: “Unlike Robby, Jamie didn’t tease him. He seemed to love hearing about [the objects] […] Only his mom had ever shown this much interest in his collection” (384). After months of loneliness, Ben finally finds someone who respects his interests and his prized possessions. By the end of the novel, Ben has both Jamie and his grandmother, Rose, and a better idea of his own identity. He finally feels as if he has found his place in the world: “Whatever happened, Ben knew that he belonged here, with his friend, and his grandmother, and millions of other people waiting in the dark for the lights to come back on” (617).
Rose has a similar struggle to find a place where she belongs. Her parents don’t understand her, are divorced, and rarely pay attention to her. In the first part of the book, Rose’s tutor defines her condition as a deaf-mute as prison-like; Rose protests this definition of herself, but also feels an acute loneliness because so few people understand her. Rose’s one wish, made on the meteorite in the museum, is also about belonging: “I wish I belonged somewhere” (351).
Ultimately, Rose finds belonging with her brother Walter, and with friends at the boarding school for deaf children, where she meets her future husband. Rose’s belonging is symbolized by her peaceful, sleeping face at the end of Part 2, and with the signage that marks her move from danger to the safe arms of her brother. Signs in the city read: “Home,” “Brother’s and Tonic,” and “Safe at Last.” They reflect Rose’s internal landscape, as she finally finds peace and safety.
Collection and Curation
Collection and curation play a vital role in Ben’s understanding of the world and his personal and family histories. The idea of curation comes up first in Wonderstruck, the novel given to Rose by Walter and passed down until it finds Ben in Minnesota. Ben begins to understand curation as a practice that all people perform to curate their lives, spaces, and histories.
Each character curates some kind of collection in the novel. Ben has his locked box of artifacts from his childhood, which he thinks of as a “a museum about Gunflint Lake” (99). This box is precious to Ben because it contains his history. When Jamie is supportive of his collection, Ben feels as if he is seen and respected.
Jamie has his own collection, which he shares with Ben. Jamie is a photographer, and he collects the polaroid photographs that he takes each day in boxes in the museum storage room. Jamie’s photographs are also a record of his personal history—he has images of his mother and father, and of Ben. His life is recorded visually in this way.
It is also significant that a huge part of the story takes place in the American Museum of Natural History, and both Rose and Daniel were curators at the museum. The museum itself has clues to Ben’s past and becomes a record of his family and its histories.
Meanwhile, Rose develops her own museum of Daniel’s life just before his death. In the Panorama, which she is responsible for maintaining, she places hidden objects that tell Daniel’s life story. After his death, the Panorama becomes an elegy and a history of Daniel’s entire life in New York and beyond. Rose is a curator from childhood on, as she makes a scrapbook of her mother’s exploits and builds dioramas of the city skyline. Her passion for collecting is a way of staying connected to the world and to her family.
As each character collects and maintains their collection, we are able to find their histories in each object and consider what is important to each of them. Though museum curation is also relevant here, each character, whether an official curator or not, has a collection that speaks to their personal lives, histories, and desires.
