Entry 4: Title Significance

    The title They Cage The Animals At Night is very significant. The first home Jennings is placed in is The Home of The Angels. One of the nuns, Sister Clair, hands out stuffed animals every night to the children before bed. The title foreshadows when Jennings asks Mark why the nuns take away the stuffed animals at night and he tells him, “ It’s the rules! They cage the animals at night! It’s the rules” (26). The title also comes up later when Jennings asks, “Sister, why do you do that? Cage the animals at night?” (56). The title is figurative because the nuns do not really cage animals at night. The animals symbolize the stuffed ones Sister Clair gave the children at night, and the nuns take the stuffed animals away and lock them in a drawer after all the children have gone to sleep. The title is literal because the nuns lock away the stuffed animals after all the children have fallen asleep.

    The deeper meaning of They Cage The Animals At Night is the way “the caged animals” symbolize the children.  When Jennings asks Sister Clair why they have to cage the animals she says, “You see, the animals that we are given we have to care for. If we didn't cage them up in one place we might lose them, they might get hurt or damaged. It's not the best thing, but it's the only way we have to take care of them...my heart would break if I just saw one of those animals lying by the wayside...unloved'"(56). She is pretty much saying all the children are given to the nuns to care for while the parents are unable to, and if the nuns let the children run around outside wherever they wanted, the children would get lost or hurt, and that’s the reason why the nuns keep the children inside, to protect them from the outside.