All The Laughter, and All That Money

"All the laughter drained out of Dicey, like all that money draining out of her checking account."
-Seventeen Against the Dealer, Cynthia Voigt

Dicey was robbed in the night, and all of incredibly well made tools were stolen, and some paint cans were knocked over. After this I began to notice that Dicey was acting like she had been drained of all life and happiness she'd ever had. This is a little before the quote. After the quote, in the new chapter, Dicey is just lost, and I was trying to track her mood going up and down. Nothing about anything she did seemed to change, and I thought that she was just so traumatized by being robbed that she was almost a robot, that she was just so dead to the world. After that I started watching the other characters and how she interacted with them was so sad. Everything she said seemed like it would've been said in a monotone voice with a sad blank face.

I thought after this that Dicey might be worried about being robbed again, now having a gaping hole in her shop's door. After I proved this to be wrong I realized she's worried about her mental and physical safety, not her financial safety. Everyone around her, especially Gram seems to worry about her mental state because she's become slow and inattentive and stopped caring about her business. I think the quote just shows what being robbed can do to a person mentally. She was laughing it away with Cisco at the hardware store as she buys new tools but deep down she's standing there dying inside. I think if one more slight accident happened at home or at her shop she would have a few dollars left in her checking account and she would probably not be able to handle it mentally.

I'm aware these things happen in the real world because you see this happening on the train and on the street everyday in NYC or you hear about it on the news. I don't personally know anyone who's been burglarized like this, and had it affect them so strongly but I can imagine it would. Being someone who has 9 cameras displayed in my room, I can easily imagine what it would be like to have them stolen, just like how Dicey must've felt when she had her tools stolen, knowing how sentimental they were to her. I see in the book how Dicey is mentally destroyed, and I can really see how I would be too, and how hard it is for her to get over it.