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Salt
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Flames, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Grief and Human Connection
Nature vs. Human Effort
Sexism
Love and Respect
Summary
Analysis
Meanwhile, Charlotte sprints down the driveway. Moments ago, she opened a book that Levi left out: The Wooden Jacket, by Thurston Hough. She thought it was about trees or wood but realized it was actually about coffins. When she saw a note next to the book, a list of her body measurements in her brother’s handwriting, she packed a backpack with her most treasured possessions and some necessary provisions and ran out of the house. The thought of being buried, even if her brother is only researching, is enough to make her run away, because the prospect of cremation is one of the only things that still connects her to Levi and Charlotte’s mother.
When Charlotte leaves in a hurry without confronting Levi about his plans, it’s clear that the relationship between her and her brother is built on gestures rather than verbal communication. Both siblings' actions—the coffin plans and the escape—are dramatic and even slightly violent, which suggests that there’s a tension between them: perhaps they haven’t explained themselves to each other because they don’t expect the other to understand. This moment also demonstrates Charlotte’s instinct to escape whenever she feels trapped, whether emotionally (in her relationship with Levi) or physically (in a coffin).
Themes
Charlotte flags down a pickup truck. The driver, a neighbor she’s not particularly close to, picks her up, and they drive away from her home. Charlotte deliberates going to Levi and Charlotte’s father, but she quickly realizes that she still resents and mistrusts him after he left the family; his house is “another coffin.” The driver drops her off at the Launceston bus station. She goes for a walk to stretch her legs and finds herself on a waterfront boardwalk. She watches the two Esk rivers meeting with the Tamar in the dark. She crawls under an upturned dinghy at the dock and falls asleep.
Charlotte seems accustomed to uncomfortable and potentially unsafe situations like getting into a car with a stranger and sleeping under a boat, given that she appears to make these decisions without much hesitation. This suggests she puts her emotional safety—feeling in control of herself and far from those who threaten her happiness—above physical comfort.
Themes
Charlotte dreams that the fields of the farm where she lives are becoming wide patches of green lava, and the coastal gullies freeze and crack. In the dream, Levi and Charlotte’s mother sprays water onto sunburnt shoulders, and then those shoulders sprout fern fronds. Meanwhile, Levi pounds on the walls of their cottage and screams. Charlotte wakes up. Something warm is pressing on her stomach: a rakali, or water rat. Charlotte lifts the boat and climbs out from beneath it while the rat curls up and goes back to sleep.
Charlotte’s dream includes repeated transformations of natural landscapes, which emphasizes the power—and potential destructiveness—of the natural world. The dream suggests that Charlotte is still in a stage of profound grief, given the focus on her mother. But it also suggests that she’s also worried about Levi; even though she’s running away from him, she knows he may be in danger, and she’s worried about him.
Themes
Charlotte boards a rickety bus, which sets off south along the highway. She’s sure that leaving Levi was the right decision: talking to him wouldn’t have changed his mind. She knows he thinks she’s gone mad and is trying to help her. But in Charlotte’s opinion, he's the one who needs help because—unlike her—he hasn’t demonstrated any grief for Levi and Charlotte’s mother.
From Charlotte’s inner monologue, it’s clear that she feels the need to reassure herself about her decision. Although it was a decision she made quickly and without informing anyone about it, she’s still preoccupied with how Levi might react to it.
Themes
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Something goes wrong with the bus, so it stops in Tunbridge for the night. Charlotte gets a beer at a pub. She was angry when she learned they’d be stopping here, but she calmed down upon seeing her comfortable hotel room. At the pub, she listens to a pair of miners a few chairs away muttering to each other while sneaking looks at her. Charlotte begins to pay close attention to their conversation when they start taking about a tin mine in the south, “at the bottom of the world.”
Charlotte’s angry reaction demonstrates her instinct to respond emotionally to life events, opting to panic rather than stay calm. Meanwhile, her instinct for escape is clear when she hones in on the miners’ conversation about “the bottom of the world”—she is obviously eager to get as far away from the north as she can.
Themes
The miners notice Charlotte eavesdropping and move to sit next to her. She relaxes in their company. One of them has a moustache and is “sharp and funny.” The other is taller, kind, and quiet. After a while, Charlotte puts a hand on the taller one’s shoulder and he smiles shyly at her. She “lures” him back to the corridor outside her hotel room and begins to kiss him. Suddenly, she feels the hands of the other miner on her shoulders. The tall miner winks at his friend, and Charlotte understands they’ve done this before. She feels a “burst of heat” in her body and shouts at the miners to leave her alone. The taller miner clutches his wrist, and he and the other miner run off. Before Charlotte goes to sleep, she writes down the name of the southern mining town they were discussing: Melaleuca.
Charlotte doesn’t initially sense any danger in the miners’ company. She feels in control of the situation—that it is her, not the miners, doing the “luring.”—Her read on the situation suggests that she underestimates or hasn’t frequently experienced the kind of sexist behavior the two miners are about to exhibit when they attempt to overpower her. The heat in her body combined with the miner clutching his wrist implies that she has the capacity to burn others, hinting that she possesses a supernatural, fire-based ability that she hasn’t yet fully realized.
Themes
The next day, Charlotte, hungover, continues south on the repaired bus. The miners’ faces fade from her memory. In this season, the landscape should be lush and green, but instead it looks malnourished and beige. Charlotte dozes and wakes up when the bus reaches the suburbs of Tasmania’s capital city. She hopes the bus will drive straight through the city. It does, and then it stops in the nearby beach town of Kingston. Here, Charlotte gets off the bus and smells “white-picket fences” and “collared shirts at church,” so she returns to the bus station to buy a ticket further south. Then she boards a smaller bus, and as it drives through smaller towns and bigger fields, she relaxes.
The fact that the landscape doesn’t look as lush and healthy as it should is a foreboding sign, one that suggests that the natural world has been disrupted and that climate change is becoming visually apparent on the island. The scents that Charlotte notices build a picture of clean conformity, so her decision to leave the city as soon as she arrives demonstrates her discomfort with stifling social norms. In running away, she’s escaping not just from her brother, but also from anything that makes her feel trapped, including a lifestyle that’s governed by the opinions of others.
Themes
The bus stops in Franklin. The stillness of the town calms Charlotte. She finds a map in an antique shop and locates Melaleuca on it, but there’s no road that leads there. The owner of the shop tells Charlotte that boat or plane are the only ways to get there. She gives Charlotte the name of a boat that sails there. Charlotte finds the boat and knocks on its hull until a sailor with “grey hair, a grey beard, grey eyes and grey lips” emerges. Charlotte begins to list the things she’ll do for him, including cleaning fish and scrubbing the decks. The sailor tells her to stop talking, tosses her a brush, and tells her they’ll leave tomorrow morning.
External influences, like the feeling of a particular geographical place, have an instant effect on Charlotte: she’s happiest when she can live in harmony with the world around her. Her pursuit of a method of transportation to Melaleuca gives her journey a sense of epic scale. This isn’t any ordinary vacation; rather, it's an odyssey that requires stamina and great effort. In this way, Charlotte’s journey becomes a hero’s journey, and the reader gets the sense that she’ll be profoundly transformed along the way.
Themes
