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Chapter 41
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Milkweed, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Relationships
War, Dehumanization, and Innocence
Ingenuity, Resilience, and Survival
Family
Summary
Analysis
The man asks Misha if he’s a Jew. Misha says yes, explaining that he’s going to the ovens. The man thinks that Misha is insane, but he pulls Misha to his feet. He takes Misha home in a donkey cart and puts him a barn. The farmer’s wife tends his wounded ear and feeds him. She scrubs him and brings him new clothes, burning the old ones. She checks on him every day.
One day, when Misha’s ear stops ringing, he walks off down the tracks. The farmer catches up with him and swats him when Misha repeats that he’s going to the ovens. He takes Misha home and ties him to a post in the barn. Misha remembers Uri’s old story that Misha had once been enslaved by farmers. Now, he wonders if that wasn’t just made up—maybe he’s just “catching up with [his] life.” One day, the farmer’s wife comes again and tells Misha that he mustn’t run away; there’s a new law that all children must work on the farms.
Misha has no idea what he’s really saying when he repeats his desire to go “to the ovens.” He doesn’t know the horrific fate that awaits people in Treblinka and other concentration camps. All that matters to him is being with the Milgroms to the end. Instead, in an ironic twist, an aspect of Uri’s backstory comes true for him as he’s seemingly at the farmers’ mercy for the remainder of the war.
Themes
