The homeless man wore a Cap’n Crunch cereal box on his head, and told Caden there is not telling how deep the subway goes.

There, he discovers candy treasure, and recalls a memory of a homeless man during a visit to New York. So much change causes Caden to reel mentally, during which time he descends to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Callie, with whom Caden has grown close, is released from the hospital. Carlyle is unfairly blamed for the incident, and fired. Tragedy strikes, however, when Hal attempts suicide by slitting his wrists. In Caden’s mental reality, the better Caden gets in real life, the closer he and the Captain draw to the Marianas Trench. Piece by piece, Caden begins to emerge from his illness.

There is the navigator, Hal, who obsessively seeks to find patterns in maps and who serves as Caden’s roommate at the hospital there is the beautiful but distant Callie who appears on ship as the wooden maiden and there is Carlyle, the group therapist who appears on the ship as the swabby.Īs the weeks pass, Poirot and Carlyle work to get to the heart of whatever illness Caden has contracted through medication and through therapy. All of the crewmembers onboard that Caden encounters are mirror images of the patients he meets at Seaview. Poirot who comes to treat Caden at Seaview. The Captain of the expedition is accompanied by a security parrot, a mental mirror for Dr. The Captain tells Caden that there is no telling how deep the Trench, or Caden’s illness, actually may go. Caden’s parents commit him to Seaview Memorial Hospital for treatment while Caden continues to spiral. Caden feels outside himself, existing both in his mentally-constructed world, reality, and sometimes a blend of both. The Captain says there is no telling how deep it goes.Ĭaden agrees to go on this expedition, which signals his descent into illness. The Captain forms the backbone of the illness for Caden, in which a pirate-like world is created wherein the Captain seeks to explore Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Marianas Trench, the deepest area in the world. Over the past several months, Caden has slowly lost his grip on reality, unable to focus on anything, constantly needing to walk, believing a kid at school wants to kill him, and being visited by a pirate Captain. Caden understands that there are two worlds – one that is real, and one that is real in his mind. “Challenger Deep” is a young adult novel by Neal Shusterman that follows 15-year-old Caden Bosch as he descends into mental illness, and recovers.

Challenger deep book pages