Honors Novel Blog #1

What would you do if you could see the dead?

Odd Thomas is an ordinary person, aside from one minor detail - he can see dead people. Just as spirits, nothing more, and they lack the ability to speak, but that doesn't change the fact that he can see them. He interacts with them as if they were real people, and sometimes he'll even do what he can to figure out how they died, which often leads him on a wild chase to solve murder cases.

But what does his gift, or curse, translate into? As a device in the story about someone whose drive to solve murders comes from his ability to see the dead, one would think that it is simply a device used to get the protagonist from point A to point B. But throughout my reading of Forever Odd by Dean Koontz, I have come to suspect that Odd's ability to see the dead may represent something more than simply a device to push the story along.

Odd himself is a strange individual, having characters such as Elvis act as spiritual guides. It is strange to look at the phenomenon Odd's abilities bring about and say that they can simply be coincidental - perhaps some sort of higher force placed them there, knowing that Odd was a strong-willed individual who would do the right thing with his strange ability. In this case, his power would represent trust and fate, the idea that some force is driving us to do what we do and simply giving us the tools to do it.

However, his ability might represent something far more sinister. It might represent the insanity that comes from living a life like the one that Odd has. He lived without a father since he was only a year old, and his mother was very trigger-happy and often holding a gun in her hands. Living such a life may have driven him beyond the brink of insanity, and led him to believe that he can see ghosts - we cannot be certain, since the story is told from his perspective. But Odd's behavior throughout the book only serves to support the idea that his gift might represent insanity - after all, most people would grow afraid and run away when dealing with the situations that he has.

Whether Odd's ability is a gift or a curse is uncertain, but it is certain that it symbolizes something more than simply what it appears to be. Odd's insanity may have driven him to think he sees the dead, or it may be an honest-to-god gift given to him by the strings of fate. Odd uses his gift to guide himself through the pains that other people feel every single day, and through the chaos that carries him through his life. But in the life he lives... is it guiding him, or is he guiding it?