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Part 2, Chapter 4
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
The next morning, Domi picks Bird up from the brownstone. Before he leaves, he hugs Margaret, wishing her good luck with her plan. Sadie is in the car waiting for him. They drive an hour and a half out of the city, arriving at the cabin where Domi stayed with her father (Claude Duchess) during the Crisis. Domi instructs Sadie and Bird to stay on the property (which is 47 acres), and she says she and Margaret will retrieve them tomorrow morning. When Bird asks Domi if she is going to help his mother, she says only that Margaret is stubborn: once she has an idea, there is no stopping her. Then Domi leaves.
Sequestering Bird and Sadie at Domi’s family’s cabin seems like the adults’ final attempt to protect them from the real world. It’s unclear, however, whether Bird and Sadie will emerge from whatever happens with their innocence still intact—or if they’ll lose that innocence anyway and come of age.
Themes
Alone together, Bird and Sadie explore the rich interior of the cabin. Sadie recounts her time living with Domi, how Domi listened to Sadie’s story and used that information to help the anti-PACT movement. Domi is trying to find Sadie’s parents, though she hasn’t had any luck yet. Though Sadie doesn’t know what Margaret’s plan is, she and Bird estimate she has hidden thousands of bottle caps throughout the city. Sadie speculates that whatever the plan is, it must be big. She thinks it will probably change everything.
Domi’s use of her wealth and power to advance the anti-PACT agenda demonstrates how people with privilege can avoid complicity by utilizing their ample resources to help those in need. Sadie’s speculation that Margaret’s plan will cause dramatic change betrays her and Bird’s continued childlike optimism, despite all they have witnessed.
Themes
Bird and Sadie explore the small lake on the property. They spend the afternoon playing like normal children, discovering small crabs that live in the sand. Sadie tells a story from her mother’s childhood about catching crabs and cooking them over a fire. Erika promised they would do this together one day. Seeing his friend’s sadness as she recounts this story, Bird tries to reassure Sadie that Domi and Margaret will find her parents. Bird suggests they build a fire inside, despite their lack of crabs.
The day that Bird and Sadie spend at Domi’s cabin contrasts starkly with their experiences in the real world. Not only does this reinforce the cabin’s atmosphere of idyllic naivete, it shows how far children in this imagined America have come from “normal” childhood experiences like playing without care. Sadie’s memory of her mother’s unfulfilled promise taints their oasis, showing that imagination can only provide an escape for so long.
Themes
Painstakingly, Bird and Sadie build a fire in the fireplace. They use old newspapers they find in the cabin, noting violent headlines and photos from the middle of the Crisis. As they tend the fire, Bird mentions how conspiracy literally means “breathing together.” He tells Sadie he used to hate Margaret, but he doesn’t anymore. They speculate some more on Margaret’s plan. Bird wonders again if the bottle caps are bombs and if his mother is dangerous. He thinks of Ethan punching the man in the Common: how his love for Bird made him dangerous. Bird and Sadie go to bed thinking of the change that is coming.
The old newspapers are remnants of a distant past, enhancing the feeling that Sadie and Bird are unstuck in time at the cabin. Referencing the etymological meaning of “conspiracy” as “breathing together” lends a poetic beauty to the act of resistance Margaret has planned, and it emphasizes that it is the product of many stories coalescing into one.
Themes
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