The Girl with All the Gifts

“Because the one thing they never learn about, really, is themselves.” 

While Miss Justineau teaches the children many things—Greek mythology, local flora, music—she steers clear of telling them about their own origins and identities. The outside world may consider the students alien and monstrous, but Justineau sees them as children who deserve a fighting chance at normalcy. To discuss the infection, the hunger, and the cannibalism would be, in her mind, far too traumatizing. When Parks puts his scent within range of one of the children, the boy reacts as expected: He salivates and pulls against his restraints, trying to take a bite out of the sergeant’s arm. Melanie is indeed traumatized—evidence that she can feel and that the children are different than the average “hungry.”

“Maybe if they all pretend not to notice, Liam and Marcia will be wheeled in one day and it will be like they never went away. But if anyone asks, ‘Where did they go to?’ then they’ll really be gone and she’ll never see them again.” 

After Liam and Marcia, two kids in Melanie’s class, are taken away to Dr. Caldwell’s lab, Melanie worries that they’ll never return. Melanie deals with her anxiety the way any normal child might: denial. She imagines that pretending it never happened will negate its reality—a kind of magical thinking common to those dealing with trauma. Melanie’s use of a coping mechanism to avoid confronting the unimaginable is a sign of her burgeoning self-awareness.