Breakout

This section applies different formats and tones to develop characterization while exploring the nature of fear and how people respond to it. The juxtaposition of Lizzie’s high-energy commentary—“reporting LIVE on day two of the GREAT WOLF CREEK MANHUNT! Actually, it’s not great at all because we’re not allowed to do anything fun” (89)—with Nora’s earnest quotations and detailed notes on the press conference illustrates the different ways the two girls cope with their fears and frustrations. Owen’s sketched plans for capturing the inmates depict the theme of Young People’s Ability to Confront Social Issues, as he labels himself the good guy and the inmates the bad guys whose escape could disrupt his birthday plans. By crafting his “Master Plans,” Owen demonstrates an effort to take control of the situation; though his ideas, such as “surround tree fort with Super Soakers to spray the bad guys down” (148), are childish imaginings, they demonstrate a willingness to solve problems creatively that the adults in the novel lack.

The omnipresence of police further illustrates The Fear of Otherness in Wolf Creek. Though Mrs. Tucker promises the checkpoints are there to keep people safe, they only intensify Owen’s worries. Similarly, Nora and the other middle school students fail to be reassured by the sudden police presence in school, noting that “seeing them in the halls with their guns kind of makes it feel like the world is coming to an end” (116). Unable to focus, the students latch on to any rumor or connection that might explain where the inmates are. The fact that Elidee has a brother in the prison exacerbates her status as an outsider and her peers’ cruel curiosity; when Cole and Walker harass Elidee and a teacher believes (or pretends to believe) the boys’ claim that they’re “making her feel welcome” (119), it demonstrates how bias and privilege are part of these dynamics, and how they are intensified by the prison escape.

Elidee’s perspective in her letters to Troy, texts with Mama, and especially her poems, illustrates how these dynamics affect her; Wolf Creek’s Racism, Bias, and Privilege have labeled everyone in her family as other. She tells Troy Mama wasn’t able to get the job she wanted nearby, and “[s]he’s pretty sure it’s because people here aren’t used to seeing names like Latanya on job applications. Everybody else’s mom here is called Donna or Kathleen or something” (85). Meanwhile, Elidee is constantly labeled by her peers. She feels she has as much reason to fear them as she does to fear the inmates, which she makes clear by writing poems from the perspectives of the inmates and the middle schoolers modeled on Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool.” While the inmates “break rules” and “won’t last,” her peers “stare hard” and “hate you” (133-34). Elidee’s own version of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” illustrates the facade of calm she feels she must wear in order to face their hate, while her efforts to emulate Nikki Grimes and Jacqueline Woodson show her longing for New York City. Her use of poetic elements like metaphor juxtapose the loneliness of Wolf Creek, where “twilight air buzzes with mosquitoes and fear” (137), with the comforts of a Bronx summer full of “Ice cubes and puckered-up laughs / Sour-sweet taste of home” (128), where she can drop her mask and be herself.