In another way, the use of his name establishes him as part of the Beale household-known here in a way that he isn’t known by people outside. Inside his house, a kid gets one name, but on the other side of the door, it's whatever the rest of the world wants to call him.” In one way, Maniac’s real name, Jeffrey, is a connection to his dead parents. But-’ she nodded to the door-‘out there, I don’t know.’ She was right, of course. You know me.’ Because he was afraid of losing his name, and with it the only thing he had left from his mother and father. When Maniac starts living with the Beale family, he doesn’t want them to use his nickname-bestowed by the strangers of Two Mills-in their house: “He told what he told everyone. Through Maniac’s journey through various homes and his struggles with grief and homelessness, Spinelli argues that, while loss and pain cannot be avoided, they are worth facing in order to find genuine love and a sense of home.Įarly in the story, Maniac perceives home in terms of his fear of lack, and his understanding of home is fragile as a result. When he winds up in the town of Two Mills around age 11, he experiences several different kinds of homes, being taken in by the Beale family, later taking shelter with a lonely old man named Grayson, and briefly living with the troubled McNabs. Maniac lost his parents in an accident when he was a little boy, then ran away from his aunt and uncle’s loveless household.

For Maniac, it’s a gradual, painful process in which he’s constantly aware of the losses he’s experienced in the past, and he fears facing them all over again.

Maniac’s story is largely that of an orphan finding home-but it isn’t a tidy, decisive event.

Maniac by Onley James