One reason A Taste of Blackberries was so revolutionary was that it described death and loss from a child’s point of view. Characters like the narrator and Heather are more cautious than Jamie, who “would do such crazy comic falls that you’d wonder how he kept from breaking his neck” (38). Nevertheless, when they and the other kids are debating whether Jamie is dead when he leaves in the ambulance, it’s the most unfathomable option in their minds.

Once the narrator learns of Jamie death, he starts asking himself more existential questions, such as “What kinds of things could you do when you were dead? Or was dead just plain dead and that’s all?” (42). These questions are the same things that many adults ask themselves.

Some of the adults tell the children that Jamie is in heaven now, as evident when Martha talks to the narrator about Jamie’s death: “‘He’s in heaben,’ she said. ‘He’s going to get to play with all the angels.’ She seemed happy for him” (66). Martha is only four, so she doesn’t quite know enough to cry or understand what a funeral is, and so she’s left at home while Jamie is buried.