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Part 2, Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Our Missing Hearts, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Free Speech, Patriotism, and the Corruption of Truth
Surveillance, Fear, and Discrimination
The Power of Art and Imagination
Parental Responsibility, Rights, and Experience
Privilege, Silence, and Complicity
Summary
Analysis
After Domi leaves, Margaret invites Bird to accompany her to the city. Again, she disguises herself as a trash-picker and brings her bag of bottle caps. For almost a month, she has been making and planting over a hundred bottle caps a day. A few times, the police have been called, and she has had to bribe them. One officer assaulted her. Now, she shows Bird how to hide the bottle caps in plain sight, in disgusting places that no one will think to disturb. Bird feels like they are playing a game to see who can find the cleverest hiding spot. Margaret wishes she could spend the afternoon doing normal things with Bird instead.
Having been distant from Bird for so long, Margaret’s invitation reads as an attempt to share something with her estranged son to bring him closer. In thinking of hiding the bottlecaps as a game, Bird betrays his longing for the simplicity and comfort of earlier years with his mother. Knowing her true plan, Margaret cannot commit to this illusion of normalcy, and so the two of them are still out of sync.
Themes
A police car approaches, and Margaret pulls Bird close as it passes. She is more afraid than he is, and she hates herself for putting him in danger. All the way home, she considers the inevitable distance between parent and child and how frightening it is for a parent to give children their independence. When they reach the brownstone, she tells Bird she isn’t going through with her plan: it is too risky, and Bird is the only thing that matters. Bird confronts her, calling her a hypocrite and a terrible mother before running up the stairs to his room.
The police car represents reality’s intrusion on Margaret and Bird’s fantasy of a normal parent-child relationship, emphasizing how Margaret has put her son in danger. Having heard Margaret’s entire story, Bird sees how her decision to give up on her plan will make her earlier abandonment of him meaningless. As Bird sees it, Margaret is not choosing him as much as she is choosing inaction and comfort.
Themes
Asleep, Bird dreams of the missing children. He wakes and remembers the argument with Margaret. He cannot understand why Margaret willingly left him and Ethan and now wants to throw away everything she has worked for. Overwhelmed by the sight of the city at night, he cries out for his mother. Margaret comes and holds him. He asks why she brought him to the city, and she tells him the truth: she wanted him with her. Bird begins to understand—she is afraid of losing him again. She promises to come back this time, and in her arms, he forgives her.
Ruminating on Margaret’s choices brings them into clearer focus for Bird. In crying out for her in the night, Bird acknowledges his need to be close to his mother, a need that still exists even if he also wants her to go through with her plan and help others. Margaret confirms that she feels the exact same way. In this way, the novel explores the tension between the all-consuming love in a parent-child relationship and the desire to advocate for a more communal good.
Themes
