Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Out of the Dust, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Nature, Survival, and the Dust Bowl
Poverty, Charity, and Community
Coming of Age
Family and Forgiveness
Summary
Analysis
A random teenage boy stops by Billie Jo’s house and offers to work for a meal. Billie Jo’s mother feeds the boy and then sends him out to the fields to find Billie Jo’s father. The boy and Billie Jo’s father work all day and then return home for dinner. Billie Jo notices how skinny the boy is, and it makes her think of Livie Killian’s brother.
Billie Jo’s family does not have enough resources for themselves, but they still find work for the wayward boy because they know he must be desperate. However, the boy does not want a handout. Despite his desperation, he is willing to work for his meal because he knows how much he is asking of Billie Jo’s family.
Themes
Before the boy leaves, Billie Jo’s parents offer him a bath, a haircut, and a change of clothes. The boy politely accepts their offer and then leaves wearing a pair of Billie Jo’s father’s overalls. After he leaves, Billie Jo’s mother says that the boy’s mother must be worried about him. Billie Jo thinks that lots of mothers must be feeling the same way these days because many people move west in search of work and a better life. Billie Jo believes she will travel west someday as well, to a “distant place of green vines and promise.”
The boy’s presence is a reminder of the uncertainty of life in the Panhandle, though it also reminds Billie Jo and her family to be grateful for the few comforts they do have. If nothing else, they are all together and have one another to rely on. However, Billie Jo’s desire to travel west suggests that might not be the case one day. Note that she also clearly idealizes the west—when in reality, California (which she seems to reference here with the “green vines”) didn’t offer much more for migrants than the Great Plains did.
Themes
