“Think nice”

The “Think nice” refrain names a fragile strategy for confronting the creature: resist the hatred and fear that seem to draw it nearer, and try instead to direct gentler thoughts toward it. Anna first attempts this when Gustav Mahler turns his hatred toward the image of an eel in the creature’s chest; later, with her father dead and the creature approaching, the idea returns in a form she can sustain through song.

The thought behind the refrain

Anna understands the refrain through a contrast between stillness and emotional force. While she had sat on the bed doing nothing and thinking nothing, the creature had remained outside, looking in. When she went to the window, screamed at it to go away, and sent it disgust and hatred, it broke the window. In her retrospective account, her terror had driven its attempts to enter in the first place. The refrain therefore becomes more than a hopeful instruction: it is an effort to interrupt a dangerous exchange in which human emotion appears to affect the creature’s behavior.

Anna’s first attempt

When Gustav Mahler began sending hatred toward the creature, Anna tried to send the same counterthought that Elias Mahler was now directing toward it: “Think nice.” She could not reach him, and recognized that the opportunity had passed. The attempt’s failure gives the refrain a painful limit. It is not a command that can undo what has happened or protect someone once the crisis has overtaken them.

Song as a way to act

After Gustav Mahler’s death, Anna moves toward the boat and the creature, which is above his lifeless body. As it comes up through the grass, she breaks a weathered rack from its footing and makes a clean weapon from its crossboard. Elias’s voice then penetrates her terror. Anna cannot think nice, but she can sing inwardly: the familiar song gives her a sequence of gentle images to hold in her mind. The creature stops; its legs freeze and its arms go limp, as if a machine has run out of fuel.

Meaning and consequence

The shift from trying to think a benevolent thought to silently singing one matters: Anna does not master her fear or erase her grief, but finds a way to keep hatred from taking over her attention. Tears still run down her cheeks, and she sees black substance smeared around the creature’s mouth. She deliberately refuses to dwell on Gustav Mahler’s blood or on anything that might lead her back to anger, and continues the inward recitation. The refrain’s significance lies in this precarious interval of control: it cannot reverse the death that has just occurred, but the gentle song briefly halts the approaching creature.