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Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Elatsoe, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family and Friendship
Justice
Cultural Identity and Coming of Age
Colonialism and Monsters
Death, Grief, and Healing
Storytelling
Summary
Analysis
Jay and Ellie call Ronnie in the car. They all marvel that the entire town seemed to be watching them, and Jay admits he’s nervous for Ellie’s safety. When Ronnie asks when to pick Jay up from the Ring Center, Jay says he recognizes the mushrooms in Willowbee: they’re the kind that form fairy rings.
The fairy-ring mushrooms in Willowbee suggest that Willowbee itself is somehow using the same kind of magic that powers fairy rings. This aligns it with invasive colonial magic—and suggests that the town is also contributing to pollution, given how dirty scientists have discovered this type of magic is. This is also at odds with Dr. Allerton’s professed interest in recycling in the previous chapter.
Themes
That evening, Ellie looks up Willowbee on a satellite map. It takes her computer a while to process the request, but it eventually loads. She can’t zoom in enough to see mushrooms, but she notices that Willowbee is a strange square of green on the otherwise yellow map. Dr. Allerton’s car isn’t at the clinic on the map, and his mansion is blurred out. Ellie looks at the road where Trevor died. As expected, there’s no car or person there, but Ellie notices a spot of color among some trees. She zooms in until she notices an upturned face, and she slams her laptop closed. Later, when she looks again, the face is gone.
Just like Ellie’s phone earlier in the day, Ellie’s computer struggles to figure out where exactly Willowbee is on the map. And it continues to look out of place and as though it doesn’t actually belong in Texas, while the blurred mansion suggests Dr. Allerton is trying hard to preserve his privacy for any number of reasons. The upturned face, meanwhile, is disturbing: it suggests that strange things are going on and that Ellie doesn’t yet have all the information she needs to fully understand and handle the situation.
Themes
