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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
Kenny wakes up a little hung over in a picker’s shack in Washington state. When he arrives late for work, the foreman refuses to make an exception for him—there are plenty more where Kenny comes from. He will dock Kenny’s pay for the day. Frustrated, Kenny heads for the orchard, where he works alongside a newer picker named Wilfred. They pick more than the quota. Anticipating a bonus, Wilfred asks if Kenny wants to go for drinks after work. Kenny says he’s trying to save his money to get his own place. Wilfred shares his yearning for freedom. He says that being bossed around always reminds him of mission school. Looking closer, Kenny and Wilfred finally recognize each other. Wilfred is particularly surprised. He and the other children were told that Kenny had drowned.
It's been a few years since Kenny left home, although it’s not exactly clear how many. This lack of specificity speaks to his own growing sense that he is living a suspended, aimless sort of life. He snatches what he can between drunken binges and panic-fueled flights from one place to another. Readers can also see the lingering effects of his trauma in the fact that he seems to have developed a problematic drinking habit, just like his mother. Still, he seems to be relatively stable—at least for now.
Themes
Even though he made up for being late by picking extra, the foreman refuses to pay Kenny fairly. Kenny’s vision tunnels, and he flips the table, sending money flying everywhere. Pickers scramble to grab as much as they can as Kenny punches the foreman in the face. Rosa, an elderly Mexican picker, presses $40 into Kenny’s hand and tells him to run before the foreman can call the police. He and Wilfred take off.
Just like Maisie, however, it’s soon clear that the ghosts of Kenny’s past experiences haunt him. Unfair treatment by the foreman picks open old wounds of unfair treatment by Brother and Sister Mary at the school. Then, he was too young to do anything about it, but now he can and does stand up for himself—just not in ways that are socially acceptable, because he was never given the tools or the opportunities to advocate for himself properly.
Themes
Once they’ve made it to safety, Kenny starts to consider what he’s done. He won’t be able to get any more picking work this season. Wilfred pulls handfuls of rumpled cash snatched during from his pockets during the chaos. Like the old days at the mission school, they pool and split their resources. Then, Wilfred heads into town for some supplies. That evening, while Wilfred builds a fire and cooks some beans, he and Kenny talk about the fates of other mission school kids. Wilfred says that Lucy—his sister, as it turns out—is living in Vancouver. Howie, who survived Brother’s brutal beating, escaped the school but ended up having to go back there to sort out a paperwork issue. He assaulted Brother, beating him severely, and he was jailed for it.
Just as they did when they were kids, Kenny and Wilfred instinctively watch out for each other when briefly reunited as adults. Their story shows, in part, how the victims of the residential school system kept some of their humanity by forging intimate, family-like bonds to replace the families that the authorities stole them from. And Wilfred foreshadows details from Howie’s story, which the novel will expand on in a later chapter. Like Kenny’s, Maisie’s, and Lucy’s stories, Howie’s story illustrates some of the ways that indignities and suffering followed residential school victims throughout their lives.
Themes
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In the morning the old friends part ways. Kenny heads for Canada to look for Lucy and a job—Wilfred suggests logging, because it pays well. Wilfred plans to stick around for more picking work. Kenny enjoyed revisiting their stories of success and survival, seeing Wilfred also brought back less pleasant memories from the mission school. When he reaches Vancouver, Kenny asks after Lucy at the Manitou, but on the day he arrives, she isn’t there.
Wilfred lives an itinerant life as a seasonal worker. He doesn’t have much of a relationship with his sister—yet another testament to the determination of the residential schools to destroy family bonds. But he’s not as rootless as Kenny, whose traumatic memories drive him to run away from anything—and anyone—who reminds him of his residential school past.
Themes
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