Analysis Of Walking Backwards

Walking Backwards written by Catherine Austen is a novel written in a form of a journal. Twelve-year-old Josh shares his emotions after losing his mom from a car accident. His mother had a snake phobia, and as she was driving, a snake found its way in the car, leading her to crash into a tree. After losing his mother, Josh now has to take care of his four-year-old brother, Sammy, and do some house chores such as laundry and cooking because his father is too occupied with building a time machine. Throughout the novel, Josh deals with different types of emotions that have affected him since his mother’s death. Walking Backwards establishes different expression of feelings in Josh such as the feeling of loneliness, denial, obsession, love and hate. Josh feels lonely and abandoned by his father since his mother’s death. As mentioned earlier, Josh’s father started building a time machine in order to go back in time and prevent his mother from dying. When the father is not at work, he is found in the basement, alone, working on his time machine. In his journal, Josh states, “Dad is stuck in the first stage of grief, called denial and isolation” (Austen 13-14). The time machine isolates the father from reality and keeps him in the denial stage of his grief. Josh’s father spends most of his time in the basement constructing the time machine; this allows him to forget about his role as a parent. An example that Josh writes is: “I should go make dinner now. Dad said he would make