Language is simply inadequate to capture the depth of the emotions the characters experience in the novella. This theme is established before the novella even begins, in its first epigraph: “Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.” The quote, which comes from Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, expresses the vast distance between what people say—compared by Flaubert to a discordant tune accompanying lumbering movements—and what they feel. The novel bears out this distance, as the characters repeatedly fail to find the words to articulate their deepest griefs and rare joys.

Grief so engulfs two characters, Henry’s father and Doris Hairston, that they can barely talk. The father is “swallowed up in his sorrow” (3)—the description itself evokes choking—and speaks so infrequently that Henry considers his every word to be important. An abused girl, Doris says her first word to Henry so softly and quickly that Henry at first doubts his ears. Though not typically reduced to silence, Henry and Mr. Levine also struggle to express their emotions in words. As Mr. Levine gazes silently at the miniature replica of his lost home that he has carved out of wood, Henry sits watching him, “silent.