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3. A Little Nip
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Plague of Doves, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ancestry, History, and Interconnection
Punishment vs. Justice
Land, Ownership, and Dispossession
Passion vs. Love
Faith, Music, and Meaning
Summary
Analysis
By the time sixth grade starts, Corwin has told all the other boys about his kiss with Evelina. Outraged, Evelina does her best to humiliate Corwin, excluding him from games at recess and even shooting him with a BB gun. But these rejections only increase Corwin’s love for Evelina, a feeling made more confusing by the fact that Evelina has started going through puberty.
Evelina’s desire for an idealized Corwin is quickly complicated once she has to contend with the real person, who is just as juvenile as any other 11-year-old boy might be (despite the grand significance Evelina assigns to all of his actions).
Themes
Though Evelina and Corwin are at odds personally, they agree on one thing: their new teacher, a Franciscan nun named Mary Anita Buckendorf, is tremendously ugly. Still, privately, Evelina notices the elegant grace of her teacher’s hands, or the swift, efficient way she plays softball. Evelina wonders what Sister Mary Anita has heard about her; does she know Evelina’s reputation for being too clever and difficult?
Though Evelina makes fun of Mary Anita in public, the way she describes her elegant hands and graceful movement suggests that Evelina might privately admire—or even desire—her teacher. Tracking the way Evelina’s affections transfer from Corwin to Mary Anita hints at possible queerness, even if Evelina cannot yet articulate it.
Themes
One day, Evelina entertains herself in class by drawing a picture of Sister Mary Anita as a dinosaur. Evelina is so caught up in her work that she at first doesn’t notice Mary Anita looking over her shoulder at the drawing. Once Evelina realizes, she keeps drawing so as not to seem scared, even when Mary Anita insists that she must stay after school.
Like her grandfather Mooshum, Evelina seems to pride herself on being a daredevil, refusing to stop her cruel drawing even when her teacher catches her in her mockery.
Themes
As soon as Evelina and Mary Anita are alone together, Evelina bursts into tears, sobbing and apologizing. Mary Anita admits that she felt deeply insecure about her looks as a young child, but she no longer does. When Evelina asks if she can go, Mary Anita is firm: “I’ve told you how I feel. And I expect you will never hurt me again.” On the way home, Evelina steps on a crack, and realizes with painful shock that she is now “in love” with her teacher.
Unlike the intrigue of her flirtation with Corwin, Evelina’s interactions with Mary Anita are startlingly direct and honest. Yet in both cases, Evelina leaps to the most dramatic, passionate conclusion possible, declaring herself “in love” and superstitiously stepping on a crack in the sidewalk to affirm her new feelings, just as she had done merely a few months ago with Corwin.
Themes
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Corwin tries a series of pranks to win Evelina back, sticking crayons up his nose and eating tree bark. The best way he finds to get to Evelina is by teasing Sister Mary Anita, calling her “Godzilla” until the other kids join in. This mockery makes Evelina burn with shame and empathy for Mary Anita, but though she yells at Corwin to shut up, Corwin doesn’t stop.
Evelina’s instinctive, almost physiological sense of empathy for Mary Anita reveals a central facet of Evelina’s characterization: she is empathetic to the point of losing herself in others’ stories, taking the full weight of her community upon herself.
Themes
A few days later, Evelina is giving a science presentation on snakes when Corwin raises his hand and politely asks a question about Godzilla. Mary Anita laughs it off, and the other kids join in, but Evelina feels nauseous. She punches Corwin as hard as she can, and consoles herself by imagining a future in which she joins the convent and spends all day with Sister Mary Anita. In this daydream, Evelina will ask Mary Anita about the nickname Corwin gave her, and Mary Anita will not even remember it. “And I would know,” Evelina sighs, “that I had protected her.”
Evelina’s protectiveness of Mary Anita might stem in part from attraction, but it is also likely tied to the fact that Evelina was the first student to publicly mock Mary Anita, introducing the “Godzilla” nickname to the rest of her class. Evelina’s desire to “protect” her teacher thus reflects Evelina’s own complicated relationship with guilt, victimhood, and justice, as she seeks to make amends for the harm she herself has caused.
Themes
Evelina writes letters and tears them up, all of which ask Sister Mary Anita to come live with her at her BIA house. One day, Evelina’s feelings grow so intense that she runs to the bathroom and breaks down crying. Corwin (“crazy with love” for Evelina) persists in his taunts, sending away for a wind-up Godzilla and setting it loose in class. When Mary Anita spots the toy, she kicks it into the air. The class bursts into laughter, and Evelina hopes that Mary Anita will shut it down. But the nun just turns her face away, her expression blank and “featureless as all things which enter heaven.”
Even as Evelina admits to feeling “crazy” about her teacher, she cannot—either because of her adolescence or her limited exposure—understand that her feelings might have something to do with lust. The way Evelina describes Mary Anita’s expression in the face of class mockery (blank “as all things which enter heaven”) explicitly calls back to the symbolic doves, which were similarly nondescript, featureless, and bound for the sky.
Themes
