Repairing trauma
Stitches conjures Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as well as other canonical childhood books to create a kind of inverted and nonsensical dreamscape, a dead-end. Another touchstone image is a recurring memory of a fetal specimen in a jar, encountered when David visits his father at work. The specimen haunts his nightmares, a kind of teddy bear talisman in reverse.
Ultimately, however, this is a story of triumph, and it is Small’s therapist --pictured as the Mad Hatter--that helps him gain his footing and to realize that his internal capacity for fantasy has not only allowed him to survive but makes him remarkable.