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Chapter 24
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Deadly, Unna?, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race, Injustice, and Action
Courage and Masculinity
Duty and Sacrifice
Teamwork and Family
Summary
Analysis
Blacky imagines that the next morning, he will go to the jetty and set his towel down next to Cathy. She will immediately understand his feelings for her and will kiss him on the cheek. He imagines the scene like a romance novel in his head. He decides he must finally make his fantasy a reality and take Darcy’s advice to express his true feelings while he’s still alive.
Blacky imagines the amazing things that could happen if he committed to his feelings and acted decisively. Later in book, these fantasies will come true, but not in the way that Blacky expects here. The idea of life being short also foreshadows Dumby’s coming untimely death.
Themes
At breakfast, Team-man invites Blacky to go spear fishing, but Blacky says he’s busy. Team-man guesses that Blacky’s preoccupied with that “stuck-up” camper and calls him pathetic. Blacky then steals Team-man’s nicer flip-flops and puts on his lucky football shorts, even though Cathy has made fun of the locals for always wearing football shorts to go swimming.
Cathy’s teasing of the locals for not wearing swimsuits suggests she may be as classist and pretentious as Team-man suggests she is. This shows how blind and all-consuming Blacky’s infatuation with Cathy is.
Themes
Blacky approaches the group of his local friends and the campers on the jetty. He walks past the boys to where Cathy is sunbathing. He is working up the courage to lay down his towel when a cloud moves in front of the sun and Cathy wonders where the light has gone. Blacky loses his nerve and walks away. Once he is off the jetty, he runs all the way home. He crawls into bed, crying. He knows he is as cowardly as his father said he was.
Blacky realizes he has not yet overcome his fears. This brings him great shame because his father and his society expect a boy to always show courage. Later on in the story, however, when Blacky is presented with an issue that really matters, he will be able to overcome his fears and show genuine courage; he’ll see later that feeling comfortable talking to girls doesn't have much to do with true bravery.
Themes
