Rocky and Mick's sense of the weird leads them to irreverent or iconoclastic thoughts. Rocky does not automatically give respect to every adult or social institution; Mick has the stereotypical sensibility that an artist helps the spiritually nearsighted to see clearly and thus refuses to conform. At the orphanage, for instance, Rocky worries that no one will adopt her and she will someday have to get pregnant in order to leave. Mick, in turn, sketches townspeople as he sees their characters and does not worry if they are not flattered.

Yet their observations are never gratuitously mean-spirited or crudely expressed. Rocky and Mick are frank individuals who do not put convention or politeness first. They are classic American pragmatists who judge others only by their actions and who speak— or at least think—their own minds.