Rotters

Rotters is a 2011 young adult novel written by Daniel Kraus. A macabre bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, set mainly in Iowa, Rotters concerns a sixteen-year-old boy named Joey Crouch. Joey moves from Chicago after his mother dies in a freak accident. There, he’s taken under the care of his father, whom Joey has never met, while the residents of his new small town ostracize him. Soon, Joey learns that his bloodline is loathed by the town’s residents, who call his father the “Garbageman” and suspect him of being a thief. Stuck in this strange place, Joey strives to fit into its irrational social world while rejecting its taboos and demoralizing effect on people. The novel is known for its nuanced character development, thematic historical references to cases of gravedigging, and explorations of mortality and family.

The novel begins in Chicago. Joey is a reserved and kindhearted teenager; his life in most respects seems very ordinary, even banal. All this changes when his mother is tragically killed by a bus that runs out of its lane during an accident. Losing his only parental figure totally destabilizes Joey’s life; however, he knows that Ken Harnett, the man who fathered him, is still alive. The government department of family resources sends Joey to rural Iowa to live with Harnett, a total stranger. He has no idea what to expect and is anything but optimistic about living with a man who never wanted him.

When Joey reaches Iowa, he is unnerved to see that Harnett and the new town are not only rural, but also regressive and small-minded—a sharp contrast to Chicago. His father seems even more reserved than Joey, and is totally uninterested in Joey’s life. Harnett seems to secrete noxious fumes, which reflects his status as a local pariah for both his indelible stench and his occupation handling garbage (he is dubbed the “Garbageman”). Beyond that, Joey learns that his father is also suspected to be a thief. As a result of Harnett’s reputation and the impossibility of avoiding picking up his smell, Joey is targeted by the school bullies, who nickname him “Crotch.” Several of the school staff are in on the bullying as well.



As Joey adjusts to Harnett, he learns about his father’s real occupation. Following what he considers an ancient and necessary tradition, Harnett is a graverobber who surreptitiously swipes artifacts and valuables from the buried dead, then pawns them off for cash. Because Joey cannot find refuge from this lifestyle, he gives in to Harnett’s seemingly inherited occupation and opts to take on the role of gravedigger with his father.

As it turns out, Joey has a keen sense of how gravedigging is done and a rich vocabulary for explaining the process. In multiple episodes spanning his first year with his father, Joey explicitly describes the decomposition of the bodies they unearth. In one scene, he learns how to escape a wood or metal casket after being buried alive. In other, more gruesome scenes, he learns about such phenomena as “coffin liquor,” the liquefied product that results as a body decays over time.

Most importantly, as he learns his father’s trade, Joey thinks about the relationship of its ethical contentiousness to history. He questions the assumptions people make about the art of gravedigging as well as their glorified conceptions of the human body, which persist even after death. As Joey develops an ironic outlook on desecrating acts in general, he begins to enact vengeance on his bullies, terrifying them with body parts of the dead and luring them into graveyards. Joey thus integrates into his new life by cementing his place as outsider.



The novel and its characters make no ultimate moral claim about the criminality of gravedigging. Instead, it’s conceived as a historical contingency, one Joey and Harnett need to make ends meet. Turning away from the harsh living world toward the inert (but gruesome) world of the dead, Rotters questions whether our fears about mortality stem solely from the living domain.