Previous
Prologue
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Five Little Indians, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Resilience and Redemption
Cruelty and Trauma
Family
Finding Home
Summary
Analysis
After another one of Kenny’s attempts to escape the mission school ends quickly (the engine of the punt boat he stole died leaving him adrift and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police picked him up), Brother subjects him to brutal and humiliating public punishment. One day, Lucy slips him a handwritten note that says “Yor brave.”
It's clear that Kenny has tried to escape the residential school several times, even if the exact number remains a mystery. His determination to flee—as well as the punishments he receives for the attempts and the callousness of the authorities when he partially succeeds—speaks to the systemic nature of the abuse he suffered in the schools, while Lucy’s admiration speaks to Kenny’s importance as a human being, even if the authorities don’t see it.
Themes
Kenny wakes up on the day of his next escape attempt feeling lucky. Brother didn’t come for him in the night. As Sister rouses the children, she becomes frustrated with a boy named Howie who is still nestled under the covers. She grabs the mattress to roll him onto the floor, and he falls without waking up or moving. A monk hurries his bruised and bloodied body out of the dormitory as the boys whisper to each other. Brother came for Howie in the middle of the night. Kenny thinks he should be dead instead of Howie, but his friend Wilfred reminds him that none of them should have to suffer Brother’s abuse.
Kenny’s lucky feeling hints at how common the abuse he suffers at Brother’s hand has become to him and the other boys at the school. But his good luck is Howie’s bad luck. Clearly, the school is a rich hunting ground for various types of predators. The children unlucky enough to find themselves there are innocent and trapped victims.
Themes
After mass, in the dining hall, Kenny approaches Lucy. He tells her that he thinks she is brave, too. The staff, distracted by Howie’s death, neither notice nor separate the two and they stand together, holding hands, for a long time. In the afternoon, taking advantage of the distraction, Kenny slips down to the dock where he steals the school’s new boat. He heads north, hoping to reach Port McNeill and find his Uncle Clifford. In the afternoon, Kenny approaches a port city. He splashes to shore, leaving the boat afloat in hopes of making the authorities believe that he drowned. Then he sneaks onto the docks where he hides in a fishing skiff overnight.
Without getting into gruesome detail, the book eloquently suggests the level of control the school authorities exercise. Most of the children are so broken and traumatized that they police their own behavior even in the absence of authority figures. But in disobeying strict rules segregating boys from girls—and generally trying to isolate the children from one another to break their spirits—Lucy and Kenny both make a claim for their own human dignity and show off their inner reserves of strength. And Kenny makes the ultimate statement of autonomy by running away.
Themes
In the morning, a fisherman named Mack discovers Kenny. Mack is an Indigenous person, too, and he knows Clifford. But at first, he plans to turn the boy in to the authorities, afraid of getting in trouble for harboring a runaway. Eventually, he relents and agrees to take Kenny to Clifford’s boat. Clifford is also reluctant to let Kenny stay; the penalties are steep for harboring runaways. But, having been protected from the residential school system himself, he doesn’t know how bad it is.
Both Mack and Clifford hesitate to help Kenny, afraid of getting in trouble themselves. The abuses perpetuated by the residential school system were the consequence of a society that not only accepted the schools’ mission but supported it with the full weight of the legal system. And while the degree of its success in breaking up families is almost on display here, Clifford bucks the pressure and decides to help Kenny out, showing his own bravery.
Themes
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Kenny takes off his shirt to show Clifford his bruises and describes some of the starvation and abuse he’s endured. He asks why his mother never visited or wrote, and Clifford explains that Kenny’s mother Bella had tried to do both. But the school threatened to arrest her if she tried to visit, it intercepted the letters she sent to Kenny, and it ignored the letters she sent to Father Levesque. Clifford relents and tells Kenny he will take him home to his mother in Simpson.
It’s not until Clifford sees visual evidence of the abuse Kenny suffers that he relents—reminding readers that secrecy was the currency of the schools. The fact that abuse took place out of the public eye made it easier for it to continue. Clifford and Bella were lucky to escape experiencing such abuse themselves, but when they took her son, Bella found herself caught up in a system designed to destroy families regardless.
Themes
Things are not as Kenny remembers them when he arrives in Simpson. Bella hasn’t been using or maintaining the smokehouse where she and Kenny used to work together before he was taken to the mission school. She hasn’t been maintaining her house, either, and in her despair has become an alcoholic. Still, she’s happy to see Kenny again. Together, they clean the house and the smokehouse. When Clifford comes back with a bin of salmon for them, they work together smoking and preserving it. Each night, Bella tucks Kenny into his own bed, where he sleeps safely and soundly through the night. But the trauma of their years-long separation haunts both, and they begin to drift apart.
Kenny has tried so hard to get home because he still remembers it as a place of love, support, and safety especially after the school. But his loss broke his mother’s heart and her spirit. The system worked the way its architects intended: it broke the connection between Kenny and his family. And it rendered his home unrecognizable. It’s a testament to his—and Bella’s—resilience that they make things work even for a time. And it’s an indictment of the cruel and inhumane racism underwriting their separation when they fail.
Themes
Kenny takes odd jobs where he can, bringing the money home to Bella. When he’s not working, he wanders around town. Bella can’t stop drinking, and sometimes she disappears for days at a time. One day, Kenny finds her sitting near the empty smokehouse. He asks her if she’s glad to have him home. She says she is, but that she feels like she cannot escape her trauma or her sadness. On December 31, 1967, Kenny returns home to find her drinking with two strangers. The next morning, he sets out to sea on a fishing run with Mack.
Kenny leaves home again, this time voluntarily, after he cannot remake a family with the equally wounded and traumatized Bella. Escaping the school hasn’t solved Kenny’s problems because it's only one part of a large system designed to systematically destroy Indigenous families. But this, too, shows Kenny’s own inability to process and handle his trauma. For years, he’s only had one solution to fall back on: running away. And he doesn’t know how to do anything better to handle his problems.
Themes
