Student Question

Why was Jeffrey untroubled at Finsterwald's in Maniac Magee?

Quick answer:

Jeffrey "Maniac" Magee was untroubled at Finsterwald's because he was unaware of the neighborhood's fear of the house or simply didn't care. Unlike other kids, Maniac wasn't influenced by superstitions or societal norms, making him fearless and independent. His actions, such as rescuing a bullied kid at Finsterwald's, stemmed from his unique character and good heart, contributing to his legend as someone who defied expectations and fears.

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Jeffrey "Maniac" Magee had no problems with Finsterwald’s because he was new and did not know he was supposed to be afraid, and also because he generally wasn't afraid of anything.

Every neighborhood has that house, the creepy house no kids want to go to.  In Maniac’s neighborhood, that was Finsterwald’s.

Kids stayed away from Finsterwald's the way old people stay away from Saturday afternoon matinees at a two-dollar movie. And what would happen to a kid who didn't stay away! That was a question best left unanswered. (Ch. 5)

While it was not clear exactly what happened there, it apparently turned a perfectly happy kid into a wandering “poor, raggedy, nicotine- stained wretch” (Ch. 5).  That was why, if your baseball landed in the yard, you just left it there.  Kids wouldn’t even deliver the paper.  Being afraid of the house is known as having the “finsterwallies.”

Some high school...

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kids are bullying a poor kid with a bad case of the finsterwallies one day when Maniac happens to see them.  He is not afraid of Finsterwald's.  He probably is not even aware of the legend, and likely would not care if he was.  So he rescues the kid.  No one knows who he is, thinking of him as the “phantom Samaritan” because they are shocked he is intervening.  He puts the boy on the porch.

As the stupefied high-schoolers were leaving the scene, they looked back. They saw the kid, cool times ten, stretch out on the forbidden steps and open his book to read. (Ch. 5)

The boy was so terrified, even of the porch, that when he woke up from his faint he ran away.  Maniac saw nothing wrong with sitting there to read.  He was just a basically homeless kid.  His parents are dead.  He sits on the porch.  Yet it is a shocking statement to everyone else who sees him.

Incidents like these are part of how the legend of Maniac Magee grew.  He is partly humble and partly fearless, but he also has a good heart.  When you add these things together, you get incidents like this.  There are enough missing details to this story—such as the fact that we do not know the kids name—to make it either true or not true, but as with everything about Maniac, it really doesn’t matter.  There is nothing particularly unbelievable about it.  It is just believable enough.

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In Maniac Magee, why didn't Jeffrey have any problem at Finsterwald's?

We are not actually explicitly told why Jeffrey does not have any fear of the Finsterwald house in the way that all of the other kids in the neighborhood do.  Spinelli does not come out and say anything like “Jeffrey (or Maniac) wasn’t afraid into the backyard because…”  Therefore, we can only infer the reason.  The reason has to do with Maniac’s character.  He is a person who is not inclined to be like everyone else.  This is one reason that he, for example, is so comfortable as a white person living among black people in some parts of the book.

We see from early on in the book that Maniac is not afraid of the Finsterwalds’ like so many of the other kids are.  In Chapter 5, he casually goes into the back yard and rescues Arnold Jones when high school kids throw Arnold into the backyard.  Much later, in Chapter 36, he goes into the backyard and even knocks on their door as a way to get the McNab boys to go to school. 

Superstitions, like prejudices, are just silly ideas that people have come to accept.  If a person does not accept them, they have no force.  That was the case with Maniac.  He did not buy into the prejudices and superstitions that others had.

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