The Garden
One of the most curious traits of the series is the dependence of plants. Several characters are named after plants: Daisy, Rose, Strawberry, and Lithop. Alan is described as “Bean-shaped” and grows like a plant; there are several watering cans and a bloody seed in the basement, and Curtis is described as being “obsessed with nature.” All of these parallels are important to the central symbolism of the story: The Garden.
Daisy’s life is like a garden. She is the daisy in the center of it, a daisy searching for anything to fill the emptiness left by the rose. The only other plant in the garden is a bean, a bean taking all the nutrients for itself, suffocating Daisy. Eventually, a strawberry comes to fill the void, but it’s killed by the bean. The bean suffocated the daisy more and more, cutting it off from the rest of the world, that is, until a lithop sprouts and gives the daisy enough strength to fight the bean and reclaim the garden for itself. This is not the most important symbolic story here. Within this admittedly low-quality internet series lies an even more disturbing message of a child’s developmental period tainted by neglect and abuse.
Child Abuse and Neglect
In the series, we see several times just how abusive and manipulative Curtis is to Daisy. One of the first, and most tame, situations described is of Curtis’ late-night conversation with Daisy. This conversation shows his delusional belief and manipulation of Daisy, not allowing her to leave the house and instilling a fear of all humans into her. Curtis beats Daisy several times in the transcripts and even forces her to use a “question box” to ask questions. Curtis verbally abuses her as well, at one point telling her he’ll “Rip her goddamn hair out.” All this to say: Curtis is abusive.
Curtis’s abuse affects Daisy constantly, from the fact that she never goes outside while there are people around, to the fact that she refuses to enter the basement until physically forced to by Alan. Along with abusing Daisy, Curtis neglects both Daisy and Alan, leading to Daisy’s fixation on attention seen through the beginning of the series, and Alan’s early dependence on Daisy, as Curtis abandoned both of them.
After Curtis’s abandonment, Alan tears Daisy’s hair out, making good on his father’s threat to abuse Daisy, symbolizing how a neglected child exposed to abuse is incredibly more likely to abuse others later in their life. Daisy seems to be developmentally delayed in several ways, most noticeably in her ability to type. Daisy is also left responsible for Alan, further adding to her resentment towards him and further hindering her development into a person.
The story of Daisy Brown serves as the story of monsters, but not monsters grown from human bodies and plants. It serves as the story of a monstrous father and the effects of his abuse on his children. It serves as a story of a child turned monster by their father’s abuse, and of a child’s journey to break free from it.
