Elliot Smith's Song 'The Mind Readers'

Rhiannon Hill Per.6

Title: The Mind Readers

Main character’s song: between the bars by Elliot Smith

The main character in “The Mind Readers” is an intelligent yet trapped girl named Cameron. Cameron has the very unique skill; she can read others minds. Cameron’s grandmother is also a mind reader, yet shields Cameron from extending her powers to the fullest and hiding the true reason for her father’s death. The song Between the bars by Elliot Smith

In the novel The Mind Readers, Cameron only wants to expand her understanding of her powers and to have people in her life who really understand her. When a murder suddenly takes place in her small hometown, she is shocked when she can hear the murderer’s thoughts. A new, strange boy (Lewis) enters the town and Cameron is instantly captivated by him; she soon realizes he can also read minds. Lewis seems to make Cameron realize that she doesn’t need to be afraid of herself and her powers; he makes her forget all of the fake friends she has. In the song between the bars, it says “And forget all about, the pressure of days, do what I say, And I'll make you okay, and drive them away, the images stuck in your head” (Elliot Smith between the bars). The song is a direct correlation of how in the novel, Lewis makes Cameron forget all of the pressures of trying to be normal. Lewis asks Cameron to leave with him to an island where a sort of “foster father” for mind reader lives and takes in others of his kind (named Aaron). Lewis believes Aaron will bring out the

Cameron arrives at Aarons house, but is soon disturbed. One night Aaron requests for Cameron, she goes down in the basement and discovers a man from the SPI (secret paranormal investigators) locked up. Aaron asks Cameron to retrieve memories from the man’s mind, which she does. She wakes up from her hard work of getting his memories to find the man near death; scared and alone Cameron flees upstairs with the thoughts of “My skin crawled with the realization of what I’d done, my heart hammered with the desperate need to escape.” (335). Soon after this terrifying event occurs, Cameron knows she has to escape; yet she is unsure about her gut feeling. The song Intuition by Selena Gomez talks about acting upon what you know is right. The conflict in this novel is Cameron having to constantly chose what is right and wrong: leaving her grandmother or staying, loving Lewis even if she believes he is using her for her powers or not, leaving Aaron or not. Cameron soon realizes that sometimes you just have to follow what your gut is telling you, just like how the song intuition states. For example, “I got to go with what feels right, whoa whoa, Don’t always need a reason why, Whoa whoa” (Intuition Selena Gomez). This song directly correlates with the main conflict of the book; following your gut in a difficult