Previous
Part 3, Chapter 2
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
At the cabin, Bird and Sadie awake. They eat breakfast, feeling excited anticipation at how Margaret’s plan is changing their world. But the morning passes, and no one comes to retrieve them. With no phone or internet, 47 acres away from any neighbor, they begin to worry. Sadie refuses to entertain the notion that Margaret and Domi have been caught, and she sits stubbornly on the front step, waiting for them in the rain. When she finally comes inside, she and Bird riffle through the house’s drawers and closets, finding remnants left behind from the Crisis.
Slowly, reality begins to infiltrate Bird and Sadie’s world of optimism and fantasy. Their painful waiting recalls the years of the Crisis, when life was put on hold indefinitely. As time goes on, Sadie’s insistence on waiting in the rain feels more and more like childish naivete, exhibiting how painful it can be to let go of the imagined world and inhabit reality once again.
Themes
The items in the house—a nearly empty prescription bottle, a book of crosswords—paint a picture of a life on hold. Sadie and Bird begin to understand what it was like for Domi’s family during the Crisis, waiting for news of the outside world and never knowing what the future would hold. They make another fire using old newspapers, each of them secretly thinking that, if they can just keep the fire from going out, then Margaret and Domi will be safe. Bird tells Sadie he is scared, and she agrees. They fall asleep, waking sometimes to tend the fire, but eventually it goes out.
Again, Sadie and Bird’s situation is reminiscent of the Crisis years, when unrest made everything uncertain. Inhabiting this uncomfortable space, the two friends engage in one last bit of magical, fairytale thinking, imagining that as long as the fire burns, Margaret and Domi are safe. The fire goes out, however, symbolizing Sadie and Bird’s loss of pure innocent hope.
Themes
