Cassandra in Reverse

Smale uses technology as a symbol for the way Cassie’s neurodiverse brain experiences the world. Explaining her blackouts, Cassie imagines that her brain “is like a lazy IT department, and every time there’s a problem with the electrics it just panics and pulls the plug out at the wall” (25). Artemis, too, characterizes Cassie’s mind in technological terms: “Autism is just different wiring. You’re built in alternative neurological software, from the ground up” (346). Even Cassie’s time-traveling abilities are referred to throughout the text as “rewinding,” a reference to changing the playback location on a cassette tape. Smale also includes word choice about factory settings, power surges, and battery preservation with regard to the way Cassie’s mind works and how she manages her energy. The effect of this symbol is that the reader is given a tangible way of thinking about Cassie’s way of being in the world.

Cassie’s experience of synesthesia means that she experiences as emotions as colors. Smale subverts the use of synesthesia as a literary device, since in Cassandra in Reverse, the idea of emotion as color is not metaphorical, but crucial to Cassie’s way of understanding the world. Because processing emotion as color is part of Cassie’s actual experience, it is not symbolic.