War, Dehumanization, and Innocence Theme Analysis

In Milkweed, Spinelli doesn’t shrink from highlighting the Nazis’ brutal anti-Semitism during the regime’s occupation of Poland in World War II. There are numerous examples of characters being bullied, tortured, or killed just because they are Jewish. Misha Pilsudski is an outsider to the Jewish community, but even as a small boy, he witnesses brutality firsthand, shares in communal suffering, and shows a willingness to follow his friends even unto death. Through all this, he retains a spirit of innocence that contrasts with the Nazi regime’s efforts to dehumanize people. Through this contrast, Spinelli argues that innocence, though it may not emerge from suffering unscathed, is an enduring sign of the power of human love—and it’s ultimately stronger than the forces of dehumanization and oppression.

Dehumanization is the key to the Nazis’ oppression of Warsaw’s Jewish community. When Misha befriends a gang of other street orphans, they ask him if he’s Jewish. Misha doesn’t know what that means, so one of the boys informs him: “He pointed to himself. ‘This is a Jew.’ He pointed to the others. […] He pointed to the horse. ‘That's a Jew.’ He fell to his knees and scrabbled in the straw near the horse flop. He found something. He held it out to me. It was a small brown insect.” The boy parrots the message his society has given him—that Jewish people aren’t fully human and are worthless and dispensable. He’s trying to convey to Misha, who’s ignorant of all such prejudices, that Jewish people aren’t welcome in the world they inhabit. After a horse is stolen from the city’s carousel, the occupying Nazis grab a Jewish man (whom they view as “interchangeable” with all other Jews) to serve as a scapegoat. Misha watches as the Nazis torment the man by tying him up and spraying him with frigid water. From this episode, Misha learns how dehumanizing the Nazis’ treatment of Jewish people really is. They’re simply looking for an excuse to terrorize people by making an example out of one of their neighbors—sending the dehumanizing message that any of them can be tortured and killed, with no justification, at any time.

Misha’s innocence contrasts starkly with this dehumanizing regime, both shielding him from it and also exemplifying how love can endure even in the face of hatred. When the Nazis march into Warsaw for the first time, Misha thinks it’s an exciting parade and outruns everyone else to get the best view. “I looked at the faces of the crowd. No one was cheering, or even smiling. I was surprised. Weren't they thrilled by the spectacle before them?” In this instance, Misha’s innocence about the Nazi regime (naïvely assuming that the Nazis are part of a parade) spares him the terror of what’s unfolding before his eyes, giving him resilience. However, Spinelli’s portrayal of Misha’s innocence isn’t completely naïve. When the entire community is forced to stand at attention in the cold all night, it’s suggested that people like Misha can be manipulated because of their innocence: “It was easy to tell the people who had not fallen: they were the ones with the highest piles of snow on their shoulders and heads. I could now feel the faint weight of the snow on my head. I wondered how it looked. I took even more pains not to move. I didn't want my snow to fall off.” On one hand, Misha is somewhat protected from the humiliation the Nazis intend to inflict, because he treats the experience as a kind of innocent game—holding still enough to  accumulate snow. At the same time, his competitive mindset shows how ordeals like this one had another sinister layer—quietly turning those who can successfully comply against those who can’t. In other words, innocence might be a survival strategy for Misha, but it also has its limitations, as he can be manipulated and subtly dehumanized as a result.

However, life under Nazi rule never steals Misha’s innocence entirely. After he misses the train for the camps, he wanders into the Polish countryside and is eventually taken in by a farmer. When the farmer asks if Misha is Jewish, he says yes—that he’s following the train in hopes of finding “the ovens.” The irony is that Misha isn’t Jewish, but he identifies so strongly with his adoptive Jewish family and the community he’s lived with that reuniting with them is all he cares about. Part of this is Misha’s childish innocence—he doesn’t know what the rumored “ovens” really are, and he doesn’t know the terrible fate of those sent to the camps—but given that Misha has faithfully risked his life for years to smuggle food to the Milgroms and his other friends, it’s believable that he really would follow them to imprisonment and death. His innocence, then, is really a sign of his undaunted love.

When Misha immigrates to the United States after the war, he struggles with difficult memories and adapting to social norms. He copes with these things by compulsively telling his stories to whomever will listen—and even to those who won’t: “The important thing was not that you listened, but that I talked. […] I was born into craziness. When the whole world turned crazy, I was ready for it. That's how I survived. And when the craziness was over, where did that leave me? On the street corner, that's where, running my mouth, spilling myself. And I needed you there.” In a way, it seems like Misha’s innocence is lost as a result of what he lost during the war (like the Milgroms). But he refuses to let go of his humanity, even if it means telling his story in ways that seem “crazy” to onlookers and that make others uncomfortable. By passing along his stories of childhood innocence, Misha continues resisting the dehumanizing forces of war for as long as he can.