“In their straw poll she had voted for people being good and life being fun, with Mrs. Dees giving her a pitying glance as she stated her views: To do good, you just have to decide to do good. You have to be brave. You have to stand up for what’s right. At that last, Mrs. Dees had made this kind of groan. Which was fine. Mrs. Dees had a lot of pain in her life, yet, interestingly? Still obviously found something fun about life and good about people, because otherwise why sometimes stay up so late grading you come in next day all exhausted, blouse on backward, having messed it up in the early-morning dark, you dear discombobulated thing?”

Alison is inherently an optimist, which her teacher Mrs. Dees chooses to interpret as naïve. Alison has a sharply-observed point, however, about the sacrifices Mrs. Dees is willing to make for her students: The remainder of the story tests Alison’s views and shows that they are correct and one of the central tenets of the novel. “To do good” is an active choice, one that Kyle is willing to make despite an upbringing that has taught him to do nothing.

“Think of all the resources we’ve invested in you, Beloved Only. Dad had said, I know we sometimes strike you as strict but you are literally all we have.”

Kyle Boot’s central conflict is his mutual desire to come into his own as an independent person and his awareness that his parents’ rules—while overwhelmingly strict—are coming from a place of genuine love. Their desire for control and safety doesn’t end up wining out, in part because Kyle realizes that non-action as a witness of a life-threatening situation is an untenable moral stance. His parents’ position leaves him with no agency for himself and with no purpose in the larger community and is about maintaining the status quo instead of Doing the Right Thing.

“Sometimes she’d wake up crying from the dream about Kyle. The last time, Mom and Dad were already there, going, That’s not how it was. Remember, Allie? How did it happen? Say it. Say it out loud. Allie, can you tell Mommy and Daddy how it really happened?

I ran outside, she said. I shouted.

That’s right, Dad said. You shouted. Shouted like a champ.

And what did Kyle do? Mom said.

Put down the rock, she said.

A bad thing happened to you kids, Dad said. But it could have been worse.”

Alison’s parents are a sharp contrast to what the reader sees of Kyle’s parents in that they foster and care for her emotional life rather than trying to control it.