87 pages • 2 hours read
David ArnoldMosquitoland
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A 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.
Symbols & Motifs
Overview
Mim uses writing and music to cope with the things in life that she can’t control. She first started writing at six years old, after her Aunt Isabel told her that writing could help take the edge off and prevent her from “succumbing to the madness of the world” (22). Mim often writes letters to her in-utero half-sister, Isabel. Although the letters are addressed to Isabel, they’re really a chance for Mim to explore her thoughts and feelings. When she begins writing the letters, she makes general statements that she later rescinds, like saying that people are generally awful only to later say that many are worthwhile. These changes in the letters reveal how she herself changes from the beginning of the road trip to the end.
Music, like writing, provides a creative escape for Mim. She loves Elvis and Johnny Cash because her mom does, and she subsumes much of her identity from her mom’s. However, she also finds comfort in the music of “Bon Iver, Elliott Smith, [and] Arcade Fire” because their music “demands not to be liked but to be believed” (90). She feels connected to these artists because they seem to genuinely understand pain. At the beginning of her journey, Mim believes pain to be one of the highest virtues that shapes and defines a person. Mim listens to artists who seem to understand this idea, as if they’re expressing the very ideas that she can’t vocalize herself.
War Paint
Mim’s war paint, which she draws on her face using the red lipstick of her mother’s that she carries with her, is symbolic of the connection between her and her mom. She first began using the war paint after her parents announced that they were getting a divorce. That night, she dreamed that she and her mother were one person in front of the mirror. They began painting their face with the lipstick. When she woke up, she went to her mom’s room and took her red lipstick from her vanity. She painted her face like she did in the dream, “And it felt good” (202), although she didn’t know why. Ever since that moment, in times of high stress, she’s used the lipstick to paint her face. She calls it her war paint, which is a reference to the fact that her mom is part Cherokee. When she paints her face, she feels more connected to her mom, which makes her feel like she can confront the difficulties of life.
The war paint is also symbolic of confrontation. When Mim wears the lipstick on her face, she makes a statement that she’s going into battle. She usually wears it when she starts feeling uncomfortable because she’s thinking about too many painful memories. The war paint is also a way for her to hide her face from the world. When she’s feeling insecure, it becomes like a mask that helps her hide her feelings and detracts people’s attention from her vulnerability. Walt is the only person she shares her war paint ritual with. When she draws the familiar design on their faces, he points out that it looks like a mosquito. Mim realizes that he’s right—she’s “been drawing a mosquito this whole time” (134). She equates mosquitos with Mississippi, and she hates Mississippi. In this way, she’s been subconsciously drawing the very thing she hates most on her face.
Abilitol
Abilitol represents Mim’s dad’s fears that she will fall victim to mental illness, just like her aunt and mom. Mim’s dad first became worried that she was demonstrating symptoms of psychosis when she was a young girl who talked in different voices during make-believe. His worries grew deeper when she began displaying erratic behavior and despairing thoughts as a teenager. This is when he forced her to see Dr. Wilson, a psychiatrist who prescribed Abilitol, a drug that was supposed to help Mim feel normal. However, Mim never felt not-normal. She didn’t want to take the medicine, a feeling that was fueled by her mom’s hatred of the idea. Abilitol put Mim and her mom on a team against Mim’s dad.
During the road trip, Mim rebels against the Abilitol, first by taking only half the prescribed dosage, then by throwing the bottle away altogether. Getting rid of the medicine is her way of rebelling against her dad, but it’s also her way of trying to find herself. She doesn’t believe that she needs the Abilitol, and she doesn’t want to be defined by it. By the end of her journey, she realizes that the medicine could cause many of the physical ailments she’s been experiencing, such as vomiting and blindness, so it’s presumed that by stopping the medication she may very well have a fresh start at being fully herself.
