A Crazy Plenty: A Psychological Analysis of Finch

There are many motives behind a character’s action, words, or emotions, both seen and unseen. Authors create a background for each character in a book before they begin to write to set the tone of the character. The writers consider how the character’s past experiences would have influenced them in the future. In the case of A Gracious Plenty, Sherri Reynolds uses Finch’s trauma as a child to develop her character through psychological disorders.

Finch was an ordinary child, playing and enjoying her day, when a pail of hot water fell on her face and deformed her body. Her skin sagged, wrinkled and torn, as her personality drained. After her accident, Finch transformed into an introverted girl who trusted no one due to her surroundings and how people treated her. For example, her teachers always scolded other children for making fun of Finch, but they did not make an attempt to speak to her. Finch heard mocking from every corner when she walked into a room. This caused her to become introverted and bitter to all who spoke to her. The only people who Finch truly felt comfortable around were her parents--who had passed away at the start of the novel--and those she can see...the dead.

One of the main plotlines of the story is the dead being able to speak to Finch and Finch’s ability to see them. Growing up and working in a graveyard, Finch was constantly surrounded by those who had passed. The graveyard was the only place Finch felt solace for any span of time; there was no one there to laugh, point at, and tease her. She was alone in the graveyard. The overwhelming loneliness she felt from being ostracized by her abnormality may have lead her to create fictitious friends. These friends, those who had died, were a figment of her imagination. Finch’s unconscious recognized her loneliness, and invented people who interacted with Finch simply because she was alone.

Finch’s hand knocking over the pail of water and the water making contact with Finch’s skin were two of the most critical moments in the development of Finch’s character, as well as the death of her parents. If Finch had heeded her mother’s words to avoid the stove and had not spilled the boiling water onto her skin, Finch would not have become so crippled. Her injury is what lead her to be shunned by her fellow classmates, parents, and society as an entity--without the injury, Finch could have been someone wonderful. The accident lead her to spite all those who never stood up for her, or who called her names. It also lead her to create an inferiority complex. Someone with an inferiority complex will overcompensate the reason of feeling inferior by acting over the top or outrageous with a different action. Finch feels inferior to the town folk because of her flawed skin, and consequently acts out against the townspeople; when she “tortured” a mother with information about her dead child, Finch was attempting to show signs of strength.

            Finch’s creation of the dead people was a result of the trauma she suffered as a young girl, as was her inferiority complex and consequential bitterness to all human beings. Sherri Reynolds took an ordinary child who experienced a horrific event and spun a realistic, although somewhat freaky, story of an older woman traumatized by her experiences. The psychological condition of the character after the trauma is to be expected. A person would not just continue on with his life immediately after something as terrible as the trauma Finch experienced. Whenever Finch glanced in the mirror, she would see the result of that time, and be reminded of all she had lost, including her parents. The author’s interpretation of post-traumatic stress disorder was honest and accurate for the situation, even if it did involve the supernatural.