“He’s a strange one. Who knows? Mentally retarded? Psychotic? Brain-damaged? Who can’t get close enough to find out what makes him tick?”
The author attributes these words to someone identified only as the pediatrician at the school Dibs attends. She then goes on to immediately clarify this was not what is euphemistically termed a “special school” which were common back in the days before mainstreaming became the philosophical choice for teaching the kids who would have been sent to such schools. This litany of possibilities by the school doctor effectively sets the stage for the primary mystery at hand: what, precisely, is the condition which Dibs is manifesting through his symptoms. It is not an unimportant question to ask as the answer should b be the information that guides treatment. Unless, of course, the answer is not available or apparent.
“He was such a heartache—such a disappointment from the moment of his birth. We hadn’t planned on having a child. His conception was an accident. He upset all our plans…My husband and I were very happy before Dibs was born. And when he was born he was so different. So big and ugly. Such a big, shapeless chunk of a thing!”
If you were to hire with the instruction to come up with the most unlikable, unsympathetic—but not actively evil—mother in the history of literature, the result might resemble the mother of Dibs. At times, her words and behavior pushes the boundaries of suspension of belief to the very breaking point as it becomes almost impossible to believe that such people might actually exist among us. But she is not a character from a horror novel whose seeming absence of normal human empathy pushes her to commit malevolent harm. She is imply coldly honest about her utter lack of interest in the son she gave birth to. However, Dibs also has a little sister and the truth is that the manner toward her “perfect” child is not noticeably different. And yet, it is precisely this apparently lack of empathy—this complete lack of self-conscious censoring of her true feelings when speaking to Dr. Axline—that allows Dibs and his mother to finally form the kind of emotional bond takes longer and doesn’t seem to be quite as strong between Dibs and his father.
Dibs has become a symbol to use of all the values—the human values we try so hard to hold onto. And as the other fellow said, “With Dibs here, we can’t lose.”
The Epilogue features a letter written to Dr. Axline from a former student who is by then a soldier overseas. Against all statistical probabilities, he just so happens to be stationed in barracks with another soldier who knows Dibs and is talking about him. It is the other soldier, notice, who makes the strange assertion about Dibs being there so they can’t lose. However, the letter-writer goes on to make some odd statements himself as he writes about being impressed by “how real Dibs was” and how “Dibs it eh only real person I ever met in a classroom who could teach me what it means to be a complete person.” Axline has always steadfastly insisted that Dibs was not just a real patient, but a singular one and not just a composite of multiple kids. The language used in this letter and the unlikely scenario of them both knowing the same Dibs despite admitting not only were they not in the same class or attending school the same year, but they didn’t even attend the same school makes it powerful raises the suspicion that Dibs is, in fact, not real at all.
