Claudia Kincaid feels that her family doesn’t appreciate her—she’s forced to do chores that her younger brothers get out of, and she’s always expected to be responsible and a role model. By running away for a while, she hopes to teach her family “a lesson in Claudia appreciation.” Claudia initially chooses her nine-year-old brother Jamie as her running-away companion because he’s “rich” (he’s saved up almost $25 from gambling with a friend) and sometimes funny. Throughout their adventure, Claudia and Jamie squabble at the least provocation. Jamie is a tightfisted money manager and argues with Claudia over every penny spent. In turn, Claudia has a habit of picking on Jamie’s informal grammar, getting them into needless quarrels. But their adventure also forces them to become a team. To an extent, their teamwork develops from simply spending more time together and having fun. When Claudia finds a fancy bed for them to sleep in at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she wins over Jamie by pointing out the bed’s gruesome history (a murder allegedly took place in it). The narrator (Mrs. Frankweiler) observes that the two had “always spent more time with activities than they had with each other,” but that their adventure is changing that by closing the distance between them.
Indeed, Claudia and Jamie are forced to lean on each other’s strengths more than they resent each other’s weaknesses. Though Jamie finds Claudia too meticulous sometimes, he comes to appreciate her thoughtful plans that help them avoid discovery. And though Claudia grumbles when Jamie won’t let her buy bus fare or dessert, she knows if it weren’t for him, she would have run out of money long before the trip ended. Though the novel doesn’t show their reunion with their family in detail, it’s hinted that their appreciation for their parents—especially Claudia’s—will be stronger after their adventure, too. Overall, the Kincaids’ adventure suggests that although family members will always have to tolerate one another’s weaknesses, it’s important to encourage one another’s strengths and support one another.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Family ThemeTracker
Family Quotes in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her back. She didn’t like discomfort; even picnics were untidy and inconvenient: all those insects and the sun melting the icing on the cupcakes. Therefore, she decided that her leaving home would not be just running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere. To a large place, a comfortable place, an indoor place, and preferably a beautiful place. And that’s why she decided upon the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
She was the oldest child and the only girl and was subject to a lot of injustice. Perhaps it was because she had to both empty the dishwasher and set the table on the same night while her brothers got out of everything. And, perhaps, there was another reason more clear to me than to Claudia. A reason that had to do with the sameness of each and every week. She was bored with simply being straight-A’s Claudia Kincaid. She was tired of arguing about whose turn it was to choose the Sunday night seven-thirty television show, of injustice, and of the monotony of everything.
“I’ve picked you to accompany me on the greatest adventure of our mutual lives,” Claudia repeated. […]
Despite himself, Jamie felt flattered. (Flattery is as important a machine as the lever, isn’t it, Saxonberg? Give it a proper place to rest, and it can move the world.) It moved Jamie. He stopped thinking, “Why pick on me?” and started thinking, “I am chosen.” He sat up in his seat, unzipped his jacket, put one foot up on the seat, placed his hands over his bent knee and said out of the corner of his mouth, “O.K., Claude, when do we bust out of here? And how?”
And in the course of those miles Claudia stopped regretting bringing Jamie along. In fact when they emerged from the train at Grand Central into the underworld of cement and steel that leads to the terminal, Claudia felt that having Jamie there was important. […] And his money and radio were not the only reasons. Manhattan called for the courage of at least two Kincaids.
What happened was: they became a team, a family of two. There had been times before they ran away when they had acted like a team, but those were very different from feeling like a team. Becoming a team didn’t mean the end of their arguments. But it did mean that the arguments became a part of the adventure, became discussions not threats. To an outsider the arguments would appear to be the same because feeling like part of a team is something that happens invisibly. You might call it caring. You could even call it love. And it is very rarely, indeed, that it happens to two people at the same time—especially a brother and a sister who had always spent more time with activities than they had with each other.
I was sitting at one of the tables wearing my customary white lab coat and my baroque pearl necklace when the children were brought in.
“Claudia and James Kincaid,” Parks announced.
I allowed them to wait a good long while. Parks had cleared his throat at least six times before I turned around. (Of course, Saxonberg, you know that I hadn’t wasted the time between Parks’s announcement that Claudia and James Kincaid wanted to see me and the time they appeared at the office. I was busy doing research. That was also when I called you. You sounded like anything but a lawyer when I called. Disgusting!)
The other side of the paper needed no translation. For there, in the midst of sketches of hands and torsos was a sketch of someone they knew: Angel. There were the first lines of a thought that was to become a museum mystery 470 years later. There on that piece of old paper was the idea just as it had come from Michelangelo’s head to his hand, and he had jotted it down.
Claudia looked at the sketch until its image became blurred. She was crying.
Well, Saxonberg, that’s why I’m leaving the drawing of Angel to Claudia and Jamie Kincaid, your two lost grandchildren that you were so worried about. Since they intend to make me their grandmother, and you already are their grandfather, that makes us—oh, well, I won’t even think about that.
