Wen’s Seven Named Grasshoppers

Wen’s Seven Named Grasshoppers are the creatures Wen fears she has trapped in a jar on the lawn and left to die in the sun. Their fate is never confirmed through a view of the animals themselves; instead, the story follows Wen’s panic, Leonard’s reassurance, and the jar’s later, ominous appearance. The grasshoppers matter both as living beings Wen tries to protect and as the focus of a child’s guilt that briefly breaks through the adults’ crisis.

Wen’s care and the jar

Wen has named seven grasshoppers and written their names down. The story does not provide the names or describe how she caught them, but it makes clear that she thinks of them as particular creatures, not an anonymous group: she remembers that there are seven and insists that they must be released. Her concern is practical as well as emotional. She believes the jar is still outside and that the grasshoppers may be alive, so she wants to go to the lawn and let them out herself.

The jar has become a container for responsibilities Wen believes she has failed. She says that she left it on the grass and ran inside because she was scared, then forgot it was there. Her fear for the grasshoppers is bound up with an apology: she cries that she did not mean to leave them. The creatures’ vulnerability is not incidental to her distress. In her mind, they are enclosed, exposed to the sun, and dependent on someone remembering to help them.

The outburst inside the cabin

Wen’s anxiety erupts while the adults are still in conflict. She screams about the grasshoppers with an intensity the narration compares to the sounds she makes when suffering great, incomprehensible pain. After the first rush of shouting, she becomes silent, her mouth open and cheeks wet, long enough for Andrew to fear she has stopped breathing. She gasps back into sound and runs unsteadily to Eric, scrambling into his lap.

From there, she clutches Eric’s shirt and pleads to be allowed outside. She wants to check whether the grasshoppers are alive and release them if they are. The pleas become an urgent demand for action: she has to go now, before they die. The adults gather around her in a semicircle, asking what is wrong, but none reaches out to touch her, as if the child’s sudden distress has made her unsafe to approach. Her appeal gives the room a different kind of emergency—one centered not on the adults’ struggle for control but on the small lives she believes are in danger.

Wen’s distress also changes Eric’s response to his captivity. As she pounds his chest and cries for him to go with her, he shifts to keep her balanced on his lap, then brings his arms out from behind the chair and holds her. His hands and wrists are red, raw, and excoriated from being bound; still, he kisses the top of her head and cries with her. The grasshoppers are not a cure for the violence in the cabin, but Wen’s plea becomes the immediate occasion for Eric to comfort her physically.

Leonard’s reassurance and Wen’s doubt

Leonard bends into Wen’s sight line and tells her that he let the grasshoppers out after she ran inside. According to him, they all hopped away and are happy. His account offers a simple resolution: the jar is empty, the creatures are free, and Wen has not caused their deaths.

Wen does not believe him. She calls him a liar and repeats that all seven grasshoppers are still in the jar. Her written list of names makes the insistence concrete: she is not asking to be reassured in the abstract, but wants to check on the creatures she remembers individually. She turns back to Eric, asking him to take her outside. The scene leaves Leonard’s claim unresolved at that moment. His reassurance conflicts with Wen’s certainty, and her terror does not subside merely because an adult tells her everything is all right.

The jar’s return and its consequences

Later, Andrew crosses the lawn toward the cabin while shouting and the sounds of physical struggle continue inside. He passes the grasshopper jar lying on its side in taller grass. Sunlight flashes from its glass and aluminum lid, which is screwed on tightly; the jar has begun to sink into the earth. Andrew hopes Leonard told the truth about releasing the grasshoppers, but the narration presents that hope as unlikely. It suggests that the sealed jar most certainly contains the dead bodies of Wen’s seven named grasshoppers, making the object a cruelly mocking omen amid the violence.

The jar’s later appearance does not settle every detail of Leonard’s account, but it sharply undercuts the comfort of his words. The possibility that the creatures are still trapped persists after Wen has been moved away from the immediate scene. Later, unable to see the lawn from her position inside, she imagines the grasshoppers running out of air, knocking against the lid, or being cooked by the sun. She wonders whether they are already dead or still alive and suffering, and again blames herself. Her mind returns to their names as another crying fit begins to rise.

The grasshoppers therefore recur at the boundary between a child’s remembered responsibility and the adults’ unfolding violence. Their enclosure in a jar is a concrete danger Wen can understand, even when she cannot control the people around her. The sunlight flashing from the tightly closed lid gives that danger a visible presence on the lawn, while the unresolved fate of the seven creatures continues to trouble her from inside the cabin.