WONDER ANALYSIS

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Our boy Auggie has an ongoing relationship with things that hide his face, starting with his astronaut
helmet and—in the book—ending with his Bleeding Scream mask. And while we can quickly
recognize that his fondness for things that hide his face is directly connected to the ways in which he
looks different from other kids, masks play such an important role in this book that we're going to
take a moment to look at each one separately.

The Astronaut Helmet

The astronaut helmet represents Auggie's desire to hide from the world, and it gives him a little, er,
space from all the gawkers out there. It is the first thing Auggie uses to control when people can see
him, which is pretty fitting since that's exactly what astronauts use their helmets for too: control.
Astronauts wear their helmets to make little safe spaces for themselves amongst the endless and
inhospitable expanse of outer space, and in his own way, Auggie does the same.
The thing is, though, while it's true that people didn't stare at Auggie when he wore his helmet, they
also didn't talk to him. This means that the helmet serves as both a refuge and a self-imposed
isolation—the astronaut helmet cuts Auggie off from the world as effectively as being in outer space.
So while there are understandable benefits to slipping on the helmet, we also see that Auggie uses it as
a way to avoid having to engage with the world around him.
Fortunately Auggie's dad misses his son's face so much that he secretly throws away the helmet,
bringing his young astronaut reluctantly back to earth. And in doing so, we understand that the helmet
was a tool for a kid, and that now Auggie's growing up.

The Bleeding Scream

Auggie's relationship with masks is symbolic of his struggle to accept his appearance. He says:
I wish every day could be Halloween. We could all wear masks all the time. Then we could walk
around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the
masks. (1.Costumes.1)
All Auggie wants is a fighting chance to reveal who he is on the inside before anyone gets a look at
him. So many people judge him based on his appearance without bothering to get to know him at
all—and Halloween offers him a chance to hope for a little bit more.
Halloween is the one day each year that Auggie gets the gift of anonymity, when hiding his face
behind a mask is a totally normal thing to do; it's the day Auggie gets a little break from his usual
reality. As he cruises the halls in his Bleeding Scream costume on Halloween, Auggie notes:
Everything was different now. I was different. Where I usually walked with my head down, trying to
avoid being seen, today I walked with my head up, looking around. I wanted to be seen. (1.The
Bleeding Scream.1)
The key detail, of course, is that it is in his mask that Auggie wants to be seen. It is only while hidden
that he dares to stand tall and risk being noticed. And while this might strike us as readers as really
sad, for Auggie the day is pretty uplifting, particularly when a kid wearing the same mask high-fives
him. That simple gesture, a rare celebration of sameness, feels fantastic for Auggie—but with his
typical perceptiveness, Auggie later observes:
I have no idea who he was, and he had no idea who I was, and I wondered for a second if he would
have ever done that if he'd known it was me under the mask. (1.The Bleeding Scream.1)
In other words, we as readers aren't the only ones who recognize this victory as a small one—Auggie
does too. A mask may hide his features, but it doesn't keep him from himself.

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While we can see Auggie enjoying the anonymity his Halloween costume offers him, there's a
downside to people interacting with him in ways they ordinarily do not. Unaware that Auggie is
around, Jack says some pretty mean things about his friend that he'd never have said to his face (we
don't think), which almost completely destroys their friendship. It also gives us another layer of
meaning to masks: while hiding physical appearances, they allow people's true colors to be seen.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Via describes her family as a universe in which August is the sun, with everyone else revolving
around him. While the metaphor aptly describes the mechanics of their family (they do all generally
fret over August), it also suggests Via's larger sense of powerlessness—the universe is fixed, the
system is unchangeable. Just look at the epigraph for her section of the book:
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do.
But there's something else that's important to think about with Via's universe metaphor. While it's
easy to assume that everyone orbiting around Auggie is just a bad thing, the comparison of him to the
sun also suggests that he's the main source of light in their lives—or at least in Via's life, since this is
her metaphor we're hanging out with. And since the sun illuminates the world, we can also see Via
acknowledging that her understanding of the world around her is illuminated by having Auggie as her
brother. In short, this symbol—like family—is complicated.
But wait. Check out this other thing that Via says too:
But this year there seems to be a shift in the cosmos. The galaxy is changing. Planets are falling out of
alignment. (2.A Tour of the Galaxy.5)
So while it all might feel larger than life for Via, she can also sense that it's going to be a big year for
the Pullman family. Things may have been following one course for quite a while now, but she's off
to high school and Auggie's ending his time as a home schooled kid, and that means it's time to
reorient. So long as the Pullman's stick together, we think they'll find their way just fine.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

In Star Wars, a Jedi apprentice (Padawan) wears a small braid. Auggie spent many Star Wars-
obsessed years growing his own Padawan braid, and he and his best childhood friend Christopher
each had a braid complete with beads they had chosen together. Alas, the braid has to go after the first
day of school because it turns out to be a lightning rod for unwanted attention from Julian.
It takes Auggie a while to be able to articulate the idea, but he realizes it is time to rework his image
now that he is in middle school—and part of that process involves not being a one-note Star Wars kid.
The Padawan braid represents Auggie's younger childhood interests and fantasies. His friend
Christopher has moved away, their friendship has drifted into the past. Auggie's concerns are now
much more to do with the real world than with his Jedi training, and whacking off the braid signals a
concrete, intentional separation from those years.
In Star Wars, Padawan's cut off their braids when they become official Jedi Knights, so we can also
see Auggie's decision to cut off his braid as symbolic of him coming into his own. He is ready to find
his place in the world. And middle school is where this next leg of his journey begins.

Where It All Goes Down

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The Pullman family lives in a town house in present day Upper Manhattan in New York City.
Auggie's middle school, Beecher Prep, is within walking distance from home. Via's school, on the
other hand, is "a bit of a schlep […]. The A train down to Eighty-Sixth, then the crosstown bus all the
way to the East Side. Takes an hour that way but it's just a fifteen minute drive" (1.The Deal.23). This
is a familiar lament for just about any kid who's grown-up in a city.
By and large, families that send their kids to Beecher Prep (which is a private middle school) are
educated and upper-class, though not uniformly. As Jack explains, "My parents are not rich. I say this
because people sometimes think that everyone who goes to private school is rich, but that isn't true
with us." His neighborhood is "all the way on the 'other' side of Broadway. That's 'code' for the
section of North River Heights where people don't want to park their cars" (4. Private School.1).
Yup—definitely not a rich kid.
Also at Beecher Prep are families like Julian's family, "who everyone knows is rich," who spend
Christmas in Paris so often their kids are sick of it and who buy their kids $800 sleds from
Hammacher Schlemmer. It is private school, after all.
Given their general family backgrounds and their collective hometown—one of the most
cosmopolitan and diverse cities in the world—do you find it surprising that these kids aren't a little
hipper and more tolerant of differences? Does the need for conformity at this age, perhaps, override
their ability to be more accommodating?

Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

First Person (Central Narrator)

Wonder is narrated in the first person throughout… but that doesn't mean it's the same person guiding
us from start to finish. Instead—and pretty uniquely—each part of this book features a different
narrator. Like a movie that is filmed with a whole bunch of cameras, R.J. Palacio gives us different
angles from six different narrators over the course of eight parts:
Part 1: August
Part 2: Via
Part 3: Summer
Part 4: Jack
Part 5: Justin
Part 6: August
Part 7: Miranda
Part 8: August
In the FAQ section of her web page, R.J. Palacio admits that she didn't expect to craft a novel with
multiple narrators when she began—Wonder is, of course, Auggie's story first and foremost—but as
she wrote, she says:
I started getting very curious about Via and what she was going through in her life, and I wanted to
get behind the motivation behind Summer's bravely sitting down with Auggie at lunchtime, or Jack's
betrayal, and I knew that to do that, to really explore Auggie's complete story, I would have to leave
his head for a while. Auggie's a smart kid, and he notices a lot of things, but he doesn't ever really
know the full extent of the impact he has on people.
So each narrator fills in details about facets of Auggie's life: Via reveals a great deal about the
Pullman family culture and home life, Summer and Jack give us details about life at school. Justin has
only just met August, so his observations and interactions are all in the present, but Miranda has
known Auggie since he was a baby, so her narrative gives us lots of info about the past. If it sounds a
little dizzying, worry not: Palacio makes changing perspectives like this look easy

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GENRE

Young Adult Literature: Coming of Age

Since Wonder is all about ten-year-old August Pullman's struggle for acceptance in middle school, it
definitely fits into the young adult lit category. From trying to be popular to just trying to fit in, and
from the lunch room to the playground, all the kids—not just Auggie—are trying to figure out who
they are and how they want the world to know them.
The coming of age aspect of the book centers on Auggie transitioning from the sheltered culture of
homeschooling that he's always known to mainstream, private school fifth grade. He has to stop
hiding his face from the world in order to navigate complicated social terrain he's never experienced
before, and figure out how to handle both friends and foes with courage, kindness, humor, and
dignity.

TONE

 BACK

 NEXT

Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?

Wistful, Funny, Confessional

Wistful

When we meet Auggie, he's a pretty wistful little guy. He says:

If I found a magic lamp and I would have one wish, I would wish that I had a normal face that no one
ever noticed at all. I would wish that I could walk down the street without people seeing me and then
doing that look-away thing. (1.Ordinary.2)
Hmm. When someone's big wish is simply to be ordinary, it's a strong tipoff that he is anything but. In
Auggie's case, he has a serious facial difference—and he wishes all the time that he didn't.
Auggie thinks about going to school now that he's stronger and more medically stable. Holding him
back is the feeling that "What I wanted was to go to school, but only if I could be like every other kid
going to school. Have lots of friends and hang out after school and stuff like that" (1.Why I Didn't Go
To School.3). But he knows this won't actually happen, and as the story unfolds, we witness a number
of painful moments when Auggie wishes the opposite were true.

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Funny

From the very beginning of Auggie's life, we see how the Pullman family relies on humor to help
them through painful situations. Rather than remember only how terrifying and sad it must have been
to not know if your baby would live through the night, Auggie's mom tells the story of Auggie's birth
in a way that makes him and Via crack up every time. As Auggie explains:
It's not funny in the way a joke is funny, but when Mom tells it, Via and I just start cracking up.
(1.How I Came To Life.1)
Mom's story doesn't leave out the absolute silence in the room when everyone sees Auggie's face, or
the shattered video camera, or the doctor who passes out from shock—it doesn't sugarcoat the
moment. But from all that pain, she manages to extract the parts that let people laugh. This is how the
Pullmans roll.
But Mom doesn't have a monopoly on humor, and Auggie says his dad, Nate, is always cracking
people up too. He makes Auggie laugh, joking about Mr. Tushman's name, while Auggie is trying to
stay anti-school, and when he does, the mood in the car completely shifts: "I started laughing, not
even because I thought he was being that funny but because I wasn't in the mood to stay mad
anymore."
Since the Pullmans use humor as a tool to navigate the trickier parts of the lives, this book is speckled
with plenty of funny moments too.

Confessional

The narrators in Wonder are all very open. They may not want everyone in the world to know
everything they are feeling, but they certainly want us to know. They want to explain their actions,
and to understand why they do the things they do; they want to be heard and understood, to figure out
why they are or are not liked, and how this relates to the bigger questions of who they are and what
life is all about. So they pour their hearts out.
Jack's section has some great examples of this confessional tone. When he realizes why Auggie no
longer talks to him, he says:
It's just that I knew Julian and everybody thought I was so weird for hanging out with August all the
time, and I felt stupid. And I don't know why I said that stuff. I just was going along. I was stupid. I am
stupid. Oh God.(4.In Science.9)
He realizes how hurtful his words must have been to Auggie, and he doesn't give himself any breaks.
Jack rakes himself over the coals reexamining his behavior and attitude toward Auggie. And when
Auggie and Summer are the only kids who will speak to him after Julian destroys his social life, Jack
recognizes, "Okay, I'm a total hypocrite. I know" (4.Why I Didn't Sit With August the First Day of
School.1), which is an acknowledgment that Auggie is showing him a kindness that he opted not to
show Auggie on the first day of school.
Over and over in this book we get the good with the bad as our different narrators clue us into their
thought processes and insecurities.

WRITING STYLE

Simple, Direct, Conversational

Reading Wonder is a little like getting to read excerpts from six different diaries. And though
Auggie's story gets expanded by each different narrator, the narrators always start out by talking about
something important to him or her. It's so effective: simultaneous plot and character development.

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The first thing Auggie talks about, is—surprise, surprise—how his appearance impacts his life. Check
it out:
And I feel ordinary. Inside. But I know ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away
screaming in playgrounds. I know ordinary kids don't get stared at wherever they go. (1.Ordinary.1)
Auggie doesn't mince words. He tells us, often with wry awareness, what's what. "My name is
August, by the way. I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse."
Right out of the gates, Auggie lays all his cards on the table.
Via, on the other hand, is more complicated. She makes a big point of saying, "I'm used to the way
this universe works. I've never minded it because it's all I've ever known. I've always understood that
August is special and has special needs" (2.A Tour of the Galaxy.2). Via definitely loves her brother,
and she does understand, but at the same time, the impact of his condition on her life has not been
minor.
While swearing up and down how she totally gets it, Via is also quietly pointing out the unfairness of
having had her healthy kid needs totally eclipsed by Auggie's medical needs. She explains:
I've gotten used to figuring things out on my own: how to put toys together, how to organize my life so
I don't miss friends' birthday parties, how to stay on top of my schoolwork so I never fall behind in
class.
There's nothing confusing about this passage: Via's had to take care of Via, as her parents have been
maxed out taking care of Auggie.
Another way to think about the writing style in Wonder is like this: it's a story told by and about kids.
Which is pretty much a guarantee that the tone is going to be pretty simple—the point in writing for
kids is to have them enjoy reading, not despise it. And a great way to turn kids away from a book is to
make it too complicated to really get into.

ALLUSIONS

 BACK

 NEXT

When authors refer to other great works, people, and events, it’s usually not accidental. Put on your
super-sleuth hat and figure out why.

Literary and Philosophical References

 Gospel of John (1.How I Came To Life.5)

 The Hobbit (1.Padawan.40-42)
 Diary of a Wimpy Kid (1.The Cheese Touch.5; 4.Sides.15)
 War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (2.The Padawan Bites the Dust.11; 2.Breakfast.26, 36; 2.Out
with the Old.3)
 The Little Prince, Antoine Saint-Exupery (4.Epigraph)
 The Elephant Man, Bernard Pomerance (5.Epigraph; 7.School.5)
 Our Town, Thornton Wilder (5.Our Town.1; 6.Understudy.32; 7.School.6)
 Hamlet, Shakespeare (6.Epigraph)

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 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis (8.Packing.46; 8.Sleep.1)
 The Little White Bird, J.M. Barrie (8.A Simple Thing.13)
 Under the Eye of the Clock, Christopher Nolan (8.A Simple Thing.16)

Historical References

 Henry Ward Beecher (8.Awards.9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16)

Pop Culture References

 "Wonder," Natalie Merchant (Book Epigraph)

 Star Wars (throughout the book)
 "Space Oddity," David Bowie (2.Epigraph; 2.Major Tom.1; 8.The Emperor's Guard.13)
 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (2.High School.5)
 "Beautiful," Christina Aguilera (3.Epigraph)
 "Beautiful Things," Andain (7.Epigraph)
 "Beautiful Child," Eurythmics (8.Epigraph)
 The Sound of Music (8.Be Kind to Nature.2; 8.Home.12)
 Lord of the Rings (8.Alien.11)
 "Follow the Day and Reach for the Sun," The Polyphonic Spree (8.The Last Precept.1)
 "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side," The Magnetic Fields(8.The Drop-Off.2, 4, 10,
25, 46)

PLOT ANALYSIS

 BACK

 NEXT

Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict,
complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the
recipe and add some spice.

Exposition

Out of the Incubator

Because of all his medical issues, ten-year-old August Pullman has always been home schooled. Now
that he's more medically stable, his parents want him to start school. He likes the idea of school and
learning cool stuff, but he totally dreads being the kid everyone stares at.
Auggie has been loved, nurtured, and protected, but now that he is older and stronger (both physically
and emotionally), his parents recognize that it is time for him to face the world. Not only does he need
to learn fractions and stuff, he also needs to know how to deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly.
And we're talking about more than faces, here.

Rising Action

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Into the Fire

So Auggie starts fifth grade, the first year of middle school at Beecher Prep. Not one to overlook the
magnitude of Auggie's transition, school principal Mr. Tushman has recruited three kids to be
welcome buddies for August. Jack Will, Charlotte, and Julian give Auggie the school tour.
Jack and Charlotte are nice enough, but Julian can't handle Auggie's uh, non-traditional appearance.
Rather than try to get past his discomfort, he keeps his distance with rudeness and mockery, which
soon turns into habitual bullying.
Kids at school get used to Auggie's face, but that doesn't mean they accept him—a "game" called the
Plague makes Auggie untouchable. But despite being almost universally avoided at school, Auggie
makes a couple good friends. Summer Dawson saves him from utter solitude in the lunchroom by
sitting with him on the first day of school (and every day since), and they have become good friends.
Cool beans.
And as Jack learns to see the Auggie beneath the face, he realizes what a good friend Auggie is. These
two joke around together all the time; they're really good friends.
At least, that's what Auggie thinks.

Complication

Et Tu, Brute?

A series of unexpected snafus on the morning of Halloween results in Auggie wearing an alternate
costume, which makes him doubly incognito. Since people don't know who it is under his mask,
nobody knows to avoid touching him. Or that he can hear them talking about him.
Ever wish you could turn the clock back and un-know something? Sitting anonymously in his last-
minute costume, Auggie hears Jack say, "'I've thought about this a lot, […] and I really think… if I
looked like him, seriously, I think that I'd kill myself'" (1.The Bleeding Scream.9). Jack goes on to tell
Julian that his entire relationship with August has been entirely engineered by Mr. Tushman: Jack is
allegedly an unwilling victim of an unwanted friendship. August is devastated.
Jack is bewildered and upset when Auggie dumps him. The boys eventually make up after Jack
realizes what happened on Halloween, and punches Julian in the mouth for calling August a freak.
So Julian starts a war, turning nearly all of the fifth grade boys against Jack—for being friends with
August.

Climax

Fight Club

Okay, it's not really like Fight Club. But there is a fight. And Auggie doeswant to keep it quiet. So
it's Fight Club-ish.
The Beecher Prep fifth graders are enjoying an outdoor movie night at their Nature Retreat. When
Jack needs to find the restroom, Auggie accompanies him. A huge line for the bathroom sends the
boys in search of relief in the trees.
Unfortunately they bump into a group of older kids looking for trouble, and as soon as they get a look
at Auggie, they start flipping out. "No freakin' way, man! No freakin' way! […] What is that?"
(8.Alien.5-7). In full bully mode, the kids block Jack and August from leaving as they argue about
whether Auggie is more Gollum, orc, or Alien.

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It gets worse—one of the kids throws a firecracker at Jack and Auggie; Eddie shoves Jack hard; there
is more verbal abuse. Talk about ugly. Luckily three boys from Beecher prep who had also been out in
the woods have doubled back to see what the ruckus is. Amos, Miles, and Henry come to the aid of
their classmates, calmly trying to defuse the situation—but when Eddie yanks Auggie to the ground
by the hood of his hoodie, Amos explodes into action, ramming into Eddie.
In the wake of the fight, Auggie's hurt, frightened, and upset, but he gets that something really big just
happened: boys who shunned him all year long have just defended him. They stood up for him and
they helped him to safety, suddenly treating him as one of their own. They even high-five him,
Shmoopsters.
It's awesome, and it's not just a passing moment. Auggie returns to the fairgrounds flanked on all sides
by the boys in his class who have decided to look out for him.

Falling Action

Plague-Free, At Last

Did you hear about the middle school kid who was able to keep that awkward thing that happened
quiet? Of course you didn't—it's probably never happened. Why not? Well, gossip, for starters. And,
teachers. You know they have some kind of spooky sixth sense about these things.
So in the end everyone hears about what happened to Auggie in the woods at camp. Everyone hears
that Amos, Henry, and Miles protected Auggie. The fight in the woods is a major tipping point, but
kids' attitudes toward Auggie had already begun to thaw in the months leading up to camp.
Auggie has simply been himself—a really nice person—all year long. He is patient and long-suffering
in the face of rejection, understanding about how hard it must be for others to tolerate his appearance.
He cracks jokes at his own expense all the time, and he always gives people the benefit of the doubt
and a second chance. His nemesis, Julian, has been pretty much the opposite of that. And kids finally
start to get the picture.
Although it probably should have happened a lot sooner, it takes the injustice of senseless violence
toward August for it to finally click with everyone that he is just a kid like any other; a kid who
doesn't deserve to be tortured for the way he looks.

Resolution

Standing O

Earlier in the story, as August joins the audience in a standing ovation for his sister's performance in
the school play, he muses, "For a second, I imagined how cool it would be to be Via and Justin right
then, having all these people standing up and cheering for them" (6.The Ending.8).
He never imagines that he will end up being the kid on stage for whom everyone is standing and
cheering. But on graduation day at Beecher Prep, he is that kid, bowing his head to accept the Henry
Ward Beecher medal as the cheering, clapping crowd rises to its feet.
Auggie's made the high honor roll, but the medal he gets isn't for academics—August's award is for
the less-quantifiable qualities of character, courage, and greatness, all of which he possesses in
spades.