Previous
Unanswered
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Patron Saints of Nothing, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Truth, Adolescence, and Justice
Responsibility, Guilt, and Blame
Culture and Belonging
Death and Meaning
Summary
Analysis
After sitting silently for a while, Jay knocks on his parents’ door and asks his dad to tell him what happened to Jun. There’s no response from inside the room, and Jay wonders if his dad is crying. It’s unlikely, because Jay has never seen his dad cry. Jay heads to his own room and opens a shoebox under his bed. After the trip to the Philippines when Jay was 10, he and Jun became pen pals, and all of Jun’s letters are in this box.
That Jay knocks on his dad’s door to talk and gets no response, combined with the fact that he’s never seen his father cry, makes clear that it isn’t just Jay who is at fault for his cut-off relationship with his father. His father also clearly has issues with communication and emotional openness, which he seems to have passed down to Jay. That Jay still has all of Jun’s letters shows how much he cares about them (and about Jun), and therefore amplifies the mystery of why Jay stopped responding. In this moment, Jay is trying to understand Jun, to find some truth or meaning about Jun, by going back through these letters. The letters are the only remaining way to access Jun’s thoughts, hopes, and fears, and therefore the letters come to represent who Jun was as a person.
Themes
As Jay searches for Jun’s final letter, he wonders where his own letters to Jun are. There are definitely fewer of them, because Jay was bad at responding. He used to ask Jun if they could email instead since letters took so long, but Jun eventually told him that his dad (Jay’s uncle, whom he calls Tito Maning) didn’t let his kids have email accounts. Jay eventually finds Jun’s last letter from four years ago, which Jun sent just before he ran away from home. Instead of reading it, though, Jay reads some other random letters. It’s hard to remember that Jun is dead.
Jay’s search for Jun’s final letter, only to then put off reading it, portrays Jay’s way of dealing with the truth of Jun’s death: he’s inching toward facing it, but not ready to. Tito Maning’s decision to forbid his children to have email accounts again highlights how strict he is as a father, which in turn gets connected to Jun’s choice to run away from home. Finally, Jay’s reluctance to read the final letter seems also to be motivated by Jay’s guilt at his own failings at keeping in touch and how those failings may have contributed to Jun’s running away and eventual death.
Themes
Jay tries to call his brother Chris, but Chris doesn’t answer; he’s always busy with his new boyfriend or his engineering work. Jay then calls his sister Em, who’s at college now, and she answers. Their relationship has always been strained, but Jay misses her sometimes. He asks if she’s heard the news—his family doesn’t communicate well, so he’s not sure. Em thinks he’s talking about getting into Michigan, and she jokes that they’ll be rivals now. But Jay tells her that Jun is dead. At first, she doesn’t remember who Jun is, and she asks is he the one who ran away from home?
Clearly, Chris’s lack of response to Jay’s earlier text wasn’t exactly out of character for him. And in fact, this passage proves both that Jay is pretty distant from his siblings and that his siblings are distant from their parents, since Em hadn’t heard about Jun’s death yet. Jay’s inability to communicate with his dad is starting to make sense in context—this family clearly isn’t used to opening up to or connecting with each other. Jay is looking for connection, but not finding it.
Themes
Em then asks what happened in a too-curious tone. Jay says that their dad won’t say, and she speculates that it might have been an overdose, murder, or suicide. Jay is mad that she’s treating the topic lightly, so she begins talking about college instead. Jay gets off the phone quickly, realizing that no one but him knew Jun. He considers calling Seth, but he doesn’t. He just wants someone to hold him the way his mom held him as a kid. He doesn’t know why the news is making him so upset; he hasn’t heard from Jun in years and never tried to reach out, even when he heard that Jun had run away from home.
The novel shows here just how complete Jay’s isolation is. It is not just his imagination that his connections to others are weak: in this hard time for him, his father won’t tell him the truth, his sister lacks empathy, and he’s never had the sort of friendship with Seth that would make talking to him an option. Jay’s wish that his mother would hold him also highlights his in-between status as an adolescent: he wishes he had the parental support he got as a kid, but he isn’t a kid. At the same time, Jay is forced to confront his guilt that he has made Jun endure the same sort of isolation that Jay now feels. Meanwhile, Em’s curiosity about Jun’s cause of death deepens the mystery of what actually did happen to Jun.
Themes
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Jay finally reads Jun’s last letter. In it, Jun says that he hasn’t heard from Jay in months. Jun is tired of his police chief father (Tito Maning) acting like he knows what’s right and wrong, and he’s tired of his schoolmates fixating on shallow things when people in their country are starving. Jun doesn’t want to ignore others’ suffering, and he asks if Jay also feels this way. He wonders if Jay wants to stop writing, which is fine, but he hopes that Jay will respond.
Having failed to connect to any family or friends, Jay finally re-reads Jun’s final letter. In this moment of total isolation, he makes an attempt to connect to Jun by reading his words. The letter again highlights both Jun’s empathy for others and his isolation from his own family, all while also further painting Tito Maning as the strict “bad guy” of this family saga. Jun is also clearly looking to connect with Jay in the letter, but the fact that Jay never responded makes clear that Jay wasn’t willing or able to offer such connection.
Themes
Jay reads the letter several times, feeling guilty that he never tried to figure out where Jun went after he ran away or why he left. He searches the letter for clues as to how Jun died, but there aren’t any. He closes the shoebox like a coffin and goes to bed, thinking all the while that Tito Maning should give Jun a funeral no matter how he died.
With Jun dead, Jay endures the guilt of his failure to write back. This guilt also makes him want to figure out why Jun died, to find some meaning in or explanation for Jun’s death. The image of Jay closing the shoebox on the letters “like a coffin” is interesting. In one sense it implies a kind of sad finality and inability for Jay to connect with the dead Jun. On the other, closing the coffin is a part of a funeral ceremony, and Jay has just gone through a private kind of funeral for Jun by reading his letters, by remembering him. And Jay’s belief that Jun’s cause of death shouldn’t have stopped him from having a funeral is a statement of love, that his cousin deserves remembrance by his family no matter what.
Themes
