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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Skellig, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Weakness, Strength, and Hardship
Curiosity, Nature, and Transformation
Love, Empathy, and Caregiving
Imagination, Magic, and Faith
Summary
Analysis
The day after 10-year-old Michael and his family move to a house on Falconer road, Michael finds “him” in the garage. Michael thinks the dusty, pale creature lying behind tea chests is dead, but it moves. Michael’s Mum and Dad are inside with the baby (who has a heart condition) and the Doctor, Dr. Death. The garage and house are dilapidated, but the real estate agent told the family to see its potential with their mind’s eye. Michael can’t stop picturing the previous owner, a man named Ernie Myers who had been dead for a week before he was found under the kitchen table. In the kitchen, there is a toilet that was installed because Ernie couldn’t make it up the stairs. Michael wants to go back to their old house, but Mum and Dad say living here will be an adventure.
The expression “mind’s eye” that the real-estate agent uses asks the family to imagine the house in a better state than it’s actually in. In this instance, picturing the house with the “mind’s eye” requires picturing it in the future when it is all fixed up. Michael seems unable to see the future with his mind’s eye and is instead fixated on the past. Significantly, he is fixated on how the past owner was found dead in the house. All Michael can see at this point is death: the possibility of the baby’s death, the apparently dead creature in the garage, and the dead Ernie Myers in the house.
Themes
