Lullabies of the Children, for the Children, by the Children

In writing Lullabies for Little Criminals, Heather O’Neill has constructed a story of terror in the style of a fairy tale. Through the imagination of Baby, the story’s young protagonist, O'Neill manages to relate even the most horrendous of details with the optimism and simple rationale of a child. However, the great beauty of this book is not derived only from a hero overcoming great obstacles, or from good defeating evil. Rather, it is from the profound impact of a little girl discovering the truth behind the fairy tale- that few things are black and white and that no hero is infallible. By the end of the novel, Baby has not been promised her happily ever after, as she continues to grapple with her relationship with her father and her role as a child, but this is not a cause for pity as it may seem initially. Rather, it is a source of hope as Baby wades through the shades of gray to recognize the silver linings in her life. In doing so she is not abandoning her childish musing but rather, with great maturity, rewriting the fairytale in her own way, in a way that gives her story, particularly its conclusion, a ring of hope.

Baby’s struggle with her lack of parental figures is one that plagues her throughout the novel, complicating her relationships with the world around her. Though her issues with Jules and his neglect are never completely resolved within the pages of Lullabies for Little Criminals, the book’s conclusion offers Baby the opportunity to see her father in a new light. In moving Baby to Val de Loups, Jules is finally poising himself as the father that Baby needs as she concedes, “I needed someone else to make the decisions, and it suddenly seemed as if Jules was the perfect person to do that...he was my parent, after all (O’Neill, 318). Furthermore, in sharing with Baby the truth about her mother and how loved she has been, Jules provides Baby with as close to a bond with he mother as she could possibly have in her life. These details give Baby the sense of motherly affection that she so desperately yearned for throughout her life, as she explains, “A lot of kids get the privilege of seeing themselves through their mothers’ eyes. I could only see myself through my own eyes, and sometimes I could barely stand to look” (O’Neill, 186). This not only emphasizes Baby’s remorse of growing up without a mother, but also how her lack of motherly approval has impaired her self image. The evidence of both maternal and paternal care which Jules offers represents a turning point in Baby’s life as there is reason to believe her feeling unwanted is a catalyst for a lot of her disappointing, even harmful relationships. It is quite obvious that Baby has the tendency to befriend other outcast children, but whenever she cultivates a close friendship they are always separated from her by circumstance. “I had lost all the children that I had been close to...I was very religious about other children, and I wanted so much to believe that they could save me” (O’Neill, 307). Baby’s need for companionship in other troubled children is the result of feeling like she does not belong in the most basic of social units, her own family. She begins to view other children as the only solution to her feelings of helplessness and isolation, depending on them to ‘save’ her. Far more disturbing, however, is Baby’s notion that “every good pimp is a mother” (O’Neill, 186) as she likens Alphonse’s presence in her life to that of a mother. Alphonse realistically has little to recommend him to a thirteen-year-old girl, suggesting that a good part of Baby’s attraction to him was the result of this maternal void that Baby struggles to fill. This is supported by her excitement when he tells her that she belongs to him, “I knew what all the hubbub about commitment was. I wanted so desperately to belong to someone. It didn’t really matter who” (O’Neill, 207). The changes in Baby’s relationship with her father effectively alters her relationship with the rest of the world, constituting a substantial change in her way of life and finally discouraging her most harmful behaviour.

Another occurrence at the end of the novel which inspires hope is Baby’s realization that she is in fact still a child, despite the recent events in her life. There is an implicit innocence and comfort in this realization for Baby, whose life experiences had lead her to give up on herself much like her father, and society at large, had done. This is expressed in Baby’s description of her first kiss with Alphonse, “The first real kiss is the one that tells you what it feels like to be an adult and doesn’t let you be a kid anymore. The first kiss is the one that you suffer the consequences of” (O’Neill, 182). Though Baby is eager to find out what it is like to be an adult, she is only vaguely aware of the value of what she leaves behind. In attempting to turn her back on her childhood, Baby begins to feel, and express, her uneasiness with her new ‘adult’ self, in writing, “Some people even smiled at me as I walked by. They didn’t know. How could they know I was a messed-up, ragged, dirty nasty thing?” (O’Neill, 182) Contrarily, just before she reunites with Jules, Baby is stopped in the street by police officers who, after asking her questions and looking through her possessions, decide that she is just an innocent child in the wrong place. “The results of their investigation had clearly uncovered the fact that I was still just a child. I had thought every single thing about me was something seedy, but really, there was nothing wrong with me” (O’ Neill, 310). The police officers, as authority figures, almost appear to be vindicating Baby of her self-imposed title of “little criminal”. Their conclusion helps Baby to see that there is nothing irreparably damaged about her and that she could still be anybody that she chose, leading her to seek out her father. Furthermore, in their return to Val de Loups, one can see the parallel being drawn between Jules and Baby as both are returning to a realm that they had fought to escape. For Jules it is the supposedly backward ways of his hometown, for Baby it is the helplessness of childhood. Though Jules jokes about “moving away from civilization” (O’Neill, 322), he has come to appreciate the order that Val de Loups has to offer his daughter. Here, one more comparison can be drawn between Jules and his daughter as she too sought some sense of control and structure in entering the adult world of drugs and sex and yet only found what she was looking for in reverting back to her natural childish ways, allowing he father to make her decisions and acknowledging her life with Alphonse as a poison, “The poison was coming out of me in the form of irritating and unbearable memories... When I was done with them I would be done with junk and with Alphonse.” (O’Neill, 324) This new found appreciation for her childhood represents the greater prospects on the horizon for her as it improves the way that she views herself and thus, the way that she aligns herself with the rest of society.

The final, and perhaps most hopeful, aspect of the book is the very narration of the novel. It is clear that the story is written by an older and wiser Baby, a woman that has come to understand not only the wild behaviour of her youth, but her errors as well. In this way, one can imagine Lullabies for Little Criminals as a catharsis for a mature Baby, a way of rewriting her history, of finding comfort in her own beautiful depictions of her tragic experiences and most importantly, of putting to rest the Baby of her youth. In many ways, this book is Baby’s lullaby for herself. Perhaps writing this story is the alternative that she is speaking of when she first describes her distaste for drugs, “This separation from feeling was Jules’s remedy to life. But I was going to have to find other things to make me feel good and confident in life” (O’Neill, 87) The comfort that Jules had sought through drugs for so long is the same motivation that Baby has for recording her childhood, beauty, tragedy and all. This is hopeful in itself as it demonstrates Baby’s continued dislike of drugs. Initially, the idea of child writing her own lullaby seems sad. It is just one more parental responsibility that she had to complete on her own, much like enforcing her own curfew. However, the her personal narration grants readers insight into just how the character develops after the book ends. This is evidenced most notably when she expresses in narration how her own opinion has changed since she was in her character’s position, for instance in describing the pain of being “turned away at the door of the adult world” she writes, “I don’t know why I was upset about not being an adult. It was right around the corner. Becoming a child again is what is impossible” (O’Neill, 77). In seeing Baby react and apply her knowledge to her own childhood mistakes, we can presume that Baby has not only come to terms with, but also learned from, the experiences of her childhood. The mature narration of the story gives suggests that the positive changes that transpire in Baby’s character at the end of the novel continue, allowing her to evolve into an intelligent and creative adult.

Lullabies for Little Criminals ends on a hopeful note because of the great changes to occur at the novel’s conclusion and because the story’s narration suggests that Baby grows up to deal with her childhood experiences in a healthy way. Reading Baby’s story is inspirational as she recognizes her own power from within to overcome her circumstances and she does so without any self pity. It is this determination, formed in the book’s final scenes, that is seen in her narration- the will to have her story heard on her own terms, which propels her to tell her own story with so much feeling and honesty and invites readers to do the same.

Works Cited

O'Neill, Heather. Lullabies for Little Criminals. Harper Perennial, 2006. Print.