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Symbols
Hearts represent the children PACT authorities have removed from their parents’ custody, conveying the depth of this loss by comparing their loss to the absence of a vital organ. The first heart appears as graffiti outside the Harvard dining hall, a spray painted red behemoth accompanied by Margaret’s infamous phrase: “BRING BACK OUR MISSING HEARTS.” Bird connects the heart’s appearance to other mysterious art installations that spring up across the country, and he recognizes its meaning as a rare, open protest of PACT. The second instance of artistic protest that Bird witnesses again invokes the color red and the phrase “missing hearts,” this time connecting the imagery to the re-placed children through including knit dolls in the art installation. Bird’s early understanding of the hearts, then, associates them with kids like Sadie who have been taken from their parents, and they also bring to mind his mother and the mystery of her absence.
After Bird reunites with his mother, Margaret provides a deeper context for the hearts at the center of the protests. The line about “all our missing hearts” appears in a poem about motherhood that Margaret wrote while she was pregnant with Bird. In the poem, the line refers specifically to pomegranate seeds, likening them to children who move away from their parents’ influence, sprouting and flourishing in ways unknown to the original fruit (or parent) that produced them. This line resonated with protester Marie Johnson, reminding her of the parents whose children PACT had scattered. Marie’s use of the phrase led to it being co-opted by the larger anti-PACT movement after Marie’s death. In the context of Margaret’s poem and her relationship with Bird, the symbol of the heart more generally represents the complexities of parent-child relationships, which inherently involve separating from a parent as the child grows and changes.
Hearts Quotes in Our Missing Hearts
The Our Missing Hearts quotes below all refer to the symbol of Hearts. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 1, Chapter 1
Quotes
You’d have to be a lunatic, Bird had agreed, to overturn PACT. PACT had helped end the Crisis; PACT kept things peaceful and safe. Even kindergarteners knew that. PACT was common sense, really. If you acted unpatriotic, there would be consequences. If you didn’t, then what were you worried about? And if you saw or heard of something unpatriotic, it was your duty to let the authorities know. He has never known a world without PACT; it is as axiomatic as gravity, or Thou shalt not kill. He didn’t understand why anyone would oppose it, what any of this had to do with hearts, how a heart could be missing. How could you survive without your heart beating inside you?
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Part 1, Chapter 2
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It’s too late: already passersby are slipping phones from pockets and bags, quietly snapping photos without breaking stride. They will be texted and posted everywhere soon. Beneath the trees, the officers circle the trunks, pistols dangling at their hips. One of them pushes his visor back up over his head; another sets his plexiglass shield down on the grass. They are equipped for violence, but not for this.
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Part 2, Chapter 2
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From within, Bird kicked at her, gently this time. As if playing a game. Did the pomegranate know, she thought, did it ever wonder where they went, how they turned out. If they’d ever managed to grow. All those bits of its missing heart. Scattered, to sprout elsewhere.
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Part 2, Chapter 3
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Over and over they came, her own words echoing back to her, not on signs or in marches this time but woven into strange happenings, things so odd—half protest, half art—that they caught people’s attention, forcing them to take note; things that unsettled them days and weeks later, knotting a tangle in the chest.
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Get the entire Our Missing Hearts LitChart as a printable PDF.
Hearts Symbol Timeline in Our Missing Hearts
The timeline below shows where the symbol Hearts appears in Our Missing Hearts. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 1, Chapter 1
...excitement. When it is safe to leave, they see that someone has spray-painted a large heart in the intersection, with the phrase “BRING BACK OUR MISSING HEARTS.” Bird seems to recognize...
(full context)
Bird remembers coming across the phrase “our missing hearts” in the years after Margaret left. He saw it in pamphlets or graffitied in tunnels....
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...newspaper article she had found at the library. The paper attributed the phrase “our missing hearts” to the poet Margaret Miu—Bird’s mother. Sadie took this as confirmation that Bird’s mother was...
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...and supports the law. Later, Bird watches through the window as someone paints over the heart in the intersection.
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Part 1, Chapter 2
...searches for Margaret’s story about the cats, then searches for “Margaret Miu” and “our missing hearts.” The screen freezes on his last query. Seeing this, Mrs. Pollard tenses. She tells Bird...
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...are knit dolls dangling hanging from the yarn, and the message “HOW MANY MORE MISSING HEARTS WILL THEY TAKE?” is stenciled nearby. Officers with riot gear disperse the crowd as Bird...
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Part 1, Chapter 3
...to stay operational, hence the book’s removal. Bird asks her for one more book—Our Missing Hearts, Margaret’s poetry collection.
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Carina appraises Bird before telling him she doubts he will find Our Missing Hearts anywhere. Bird asks what they did with all the books they removed, provoking a sarcastic...
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Part 1, Chapter 4
...find the location of The Boy Who Drew Cats. He also searches for Our Missing Hearts, only to find it marked “DISCARDED.” He heads deep into the stacks, noting again the...
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Part 1, Chapter 6
...boy who drew cats might mean. He peers outside at the place where the spraypainted heart used to be, wondering how frightened the graffiti artist felt while they were painting their...
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Part 1, Chapter 7
Carina quotes Margaret Miu’s poem—“all our missing hearts / scattered, to sprout elsewhere.” She seems bitter and says that it is easier to...
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Part 2, Chapter 2
...He later dies from his injuries. The day after his death, Margaret’s mother has a heart attack, and a police officer notifies her. When Margaret’s father was pushed, several passersby saw...
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...planted from this single fruit. She writes her final poem about these seeds—the pomegranate’s missing hearts, “[s]cattered, to sprout elsewhere.”
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...not they meant this as a compliment. A press publishes Margaret’s poetry collection, Our Missing Hearts, which features a pomegranate on its cover. The book is not widely read. Margaret teaches...
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Part 2, Chapter 3
...just after Marie was shot, she holds a homemade sign that reads “ALL OUR MISSING HEARTS.” News of more PACT child removals brought the lines of Margaret’s final poem to Marie’s...
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...Margaret at once: she is the one who gave Marie a copy of Our Missing Hearts, which has since been removed from the library’s shelves. Mrs. Adelman asks about Bird, and...
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...attention better than a protest or a march. Often, they feature Margaret’s words: “our missing hearts,” and she thinks of them like independent children, off leading their own lives without her....
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