Bullying, Friendship, and Social Status Theme Analysis

What Ally wants most in the world (alongside learning to read) is to have friends and to be liked by her classmates. Due to her dyslexia and the accompanying impulse control problems, Ally finds it difficult to follow social norms and is thought of as being stupid—which together turn her into a prime target for bullies like Shay. Over the course of Ally's year in Mr. Daniels's class, Ally's changing relationship with herself and with Shay, as well as the positive and affirming environment that Mr. Daniels strives to create in his classroom, work together to paint a nuanced picture of the roles that bullying and social hierarchy play in a school setting. Ultimately, Fish in a Tree proposes that the power one can gain through bullying is intoxicating, but is unfulfilling and unsustainable in the long run—especially in an environment where bullying is made difficult or impossible.

The classroom environment that Ally introduces the reader to first is one in which Shay and her band of bullies rule. During Mrs. Hall's baby shower, Shay and her loyal follower, Jessica, lead the charge to tease Ally about the card she gives Mrs. Hall (a sympathy card with beautiful flowers on the front, which Ally couldn't read and therefore didn't know was a sympathy card) with little pushback from the adults in the room. This event does several things. First, it shows the social consequences of Ally's dyslexia: her inability to read means that she's unwittingly unable to behave appropriately at the party, even though her intentions aren't malicious. Then, it shows how her inability to follow those social scripts turns her into an easy target for bullies, as the teachers are just as shocked as the students about the card and therefore don't shut down Shay's snide comments like they might have otherwise. For Shay, bullying Ally in this situation also helps her own social status. She's able to maintain the status as the queen bee of the class while also making it obvious to everyone else how unpopular Ally is by drawing unnecessary attention to her inappropriate card.

Even though Shay bullies Ally mercilessly throughout the novel, there are times when Ally admits that in some ways, she admires Shay. Shay is smart, wealthy, and has a number of friends, which Ally knows because Shay and her cohort all wear friendship bracelets that Shay made. Ally's desperate desire to be accepted and to be a part of something means that it's not hard for Shay to draw Ally into bullying others on occasion. One day at lunch, Shay invites Ally to sit at her lunch table with the express intent of roping Ally into making fun of Albert. Ally goes along with this to impress Shay, even though she knows that doing so is wrong and mean. Ally's decision to bully Albert to impress Shay speaks to the power and draw of social status and currency for someone who has none. However, Ally regrets this choice immediately and apologizes to Albert the next day, a decision that points to the novel's ultimate suggestion that popularity and power like Shay holds aren't actually worth having in the first place.

With Mr. Daniels's arrival to take Mrs. Hall's place the Monday after the baby shower, the classroom environment begins to change in such a way as to make behavior like Shay's much more difficult to pull off. Mr. Daniels makes a point to reprimand her for her rude behavior every time, while also refusing to speak poorly or negatively about students like Oliver, Ally, and Albert who often find themselves the targets of her bullying. He also talks up all his students and praises them for their kindness and strengths, habits that eventually begin to change the social structure of his classroom. This is directly responsible for cooling the animosity and cutthroat hierarchy among his students, which in turn allows Ally to make friends with Keisha and Albert and, eventually, start to humanize Shay.

Because of their friendship and the environment of Mr. Daniels's classroom, Albert, Ally, and Keisha are better equipped and feel more confident standing up to Shay themselves. This suggests that when teachers model kindness and refuse to tolerate bullying, it in turn teaches their students to do the same. Then, possibly even more importantly, Albert's relationships with Ally and Keisha gives him the strength and a reason to stand up to the bullies that beat him up daily after school. He refuses to fight back for much of the novel, citing his pacifist beliefs, but his love for his friends means that when the bullies try to hurt Ally and Keisha, he finds himself unable to not stand up for them. This shows that what Mr. Daniels teaches his students in a school setting isn't something unique to school—it's possible and necessary to take those lessons about the power of kindness and friendship into the real world, stand up to bullies, and defend oneself and one's friends.

The final lesson for Ally, as well as Shay's downfall, comes when Ally learns that Shay doesn't give out friendship bracelets: she sells them. This makes it clear to Ally that Shay's "friendships" are fake and constructed to boost Shay's popularity—in other words, the friendships are intended to give Shay followers, not true and supportive friends. However, after Shay loses the election for class president, Ally overhears Shay's mom berating her for failing. This suggests that Shay's behavior doesn't take place in a vacuum; rather, she's behaving exactly as her parents have taught her to by prioritizing winning and superiority over kindness and friendship. Though Shay doesn't undergo a substantial change in outlook by the end of the novel, by humanizing her like this, Fish in a Tree offers the possibility for Shay to go on to develop a healthier outlook on social interactions thanks to teachers like Mr. Daniels—while also illustrating, through her lack of friends and diminished vitriol at the end of the novel, that bullies can be stopped when teachers interrupt the classroom hierarchy by providing other students with the tools and the support to refuse to play the bullies’ games.