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A Narrower Country Than Expected
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
Jay spends the rest of the day sleeping and fakes being sick the following day so he can skip school. His mom knows what’s going on but allows him to stay home from school. That afternoon, Jay gets a message on Instagram from a blank account with a low-resolution profile photo of a Filipino man. The message is just a link, which Jay ignores, but then the anonymous user follows up with another link and a picture of Jun, in which Jun looks older and has tattoos. The user, who claims to be Jun’s friend, says that Jun did “nothing wrong.”
Jay’s mother “gives him space,” which communicates her care for him but also doesn’t offer real connection. The mysterious Instagram message, meanwhile, gives Jay exactly what he (perhaps without realizing it) is hoping to hear. Jay doesn’t want to believe that Jun did drugs or committed other crimes, and was purely a victim of Duterte’s drug war. This desire is partly a result of his adolescent way of seeing the world in relatively simple terms, but, also, Jay has feared that his own negligence may have contributed to Jun becoming a target in the drug war—but if Jun was innocent, so is Jay.
Themes
Jay tries to figure out who made the account but can’t. He opens up the links from the first message, which include an article about a 17-year-old Filipino boy who was shot. The police claimed that the boy fought back, but camera footage proved that this wasn’t true. Instead, the police handed the boy a gun. The boy dropped it and raised his hands, saying he had a test the next day. There are more stories like this, in which someone is accused and killed, and then their murder is covered up. The Philippine government denies wrongdoing, claiming that people hide their true selves from their family. The article also discusses Duterte’s system of financially rewarding regular people for turning vigilante and killing drug users.
Jay has been hurting because he feels guilty that his failure to answer Jun’s letters may have contributed to Jun acting in a way that made him a target of Duterte’s drug war. The Instagram message seems to absolve him of that guilt. At the same time, the novel describes the way that the Philippine government absolves itself of all guilt for the death of the innocent by arguing that anyone might be a secret drug dealer. While Jay has taken perhaps too much responsibility for Jun’s death, the Philippine government refuses any responsibility for the deaths it causes.
Themes
Jay thinks that maybe Jun was wrongfully killed as well and that Jay might be able to find the truth and bring him justice. In order to do so, he has to get to the Philippines. It’s not totally out of the question: even if Jay has to miss some school, spring break is coming up, and Jay’s parents could easily pay for his flight. The only problem will be convincing them.
Jay now sees himself as a detective in a murder mystery—as a finder of truth and dispenser of justice. In part, this feels like an attempt to prove, once and for all, that Jay’s neglect of Jun didn’t cause Jun’s death. It’s also a way to give Jun’s death some meaning and significance. If Jun can prove that Jun was wrongfully murdered—and, by extension, that the drug war is wrong, since it harms innocent people—then something good will have come out of Jun’s death.
Themes
