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Chapter Two
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Messenger, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Selfishness vs. the Collective Good
Youth, Memory, and the Future
Humans and Nature
Identity and Difference
Summary
Analysis
That evening, Matty comments that if he and Seer had a Gaming Machine, they'd never be bored in the evenings. Seer laughs and says that their evenings, when Matty reads out loud to him, are his favorite time of day. Matty says he likes reading, but it's not exciting. He tells Seer about the Gaming Machine again, describing the candy carefully, as Seer sends him to the garden for produce. Matty washes lettuce, points to a tapestry made by Seer's daughter, and says that the Gaming Machine could go next to it.
Notably, Matty doesn't just desire a Gaming Machine for himself—he believes that it's going to improve his life as well as Seer's life. This is, again, a mark of Matty's youth and lack of understanding, as he doesn't yet fully grasp what happens when a person trades for something like a Gaming Machine. Seer, on the other hand, suggests that there are more meaningful things in the world than the simple and quick pleasures of getting candy.
Themes
As Seer washes salmon, he asks if Matty really wants to trade away or give up reading and music for the "excitement" of getting candy from a machine. This makes it seem less fun to Matty. He continues to talk about candy, but Seer points out that Ramon's parents probably traded something very valuable for the Gaming Machine. As they sit down for dinner, Matty admits that Ramon doesn't even know what his parents traded for it. Matty asks when the next Trade Mart is, but Seer says that Matty is too young to even go and watch. Silently, Matty thinks that he'd like to trade and that he wants to know how trading works.
Matty's desire to understand trading and how it works shows that he's interested in learning anything and everything that will help him move forward and be more successful in the future. Trading appears to be an integral part of life in Village, which would suggest that Matty needs to know how it works in order to properly come of age and join adult Village life.
Themes
The narrator explains that in Village, there are no secrets. Leader suggested that rule a long time ago. Since most people came from places with lots of secrets, they voted to create the rule. Most people came from places with poverty, harsh punishments, or conniving governments. Matty thinks often of his own "brutal beginnings" and knows now that his experience wasn't unusual. Some people, however, suffered from ignorance and censorship, not violence. This is why Leader insists that everyone in Village must learn. Once, when Matty was a boy and lied, Seer punished him by keeping him from lessons one day, and Matty was surprised to find that he actually wanted to go to school. Now, he's a model citizen, so it bothers him to have a secret.
While the reader still doesn't know what Matty's secret is, the fact that Matty loves Village, supports its rules, and still feels compelled to keep whatever's going on a secret shows that the secret feels too big and important for him to ask for help. However, asking for help from someone he trusts would be the only surefire way to get any answers about whatever this is, which in turn suggests that Matty might not trust people in Village as much as Village's ideals would suggest he should.
Themes
