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Chapter 10
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 next morning, Dad yells for the aspirin. Michael quickly leaves for school. At school, Michael’s science teacher, Rasputin, tells the class how humans evolved from apes. Coot scoffs, but Michael wonders if humans are still evolving. The class draws ape and human skeletons. When Michael asks Rasputin what shoulders are for, Rasputin says he doesn’t know. After class, Coot charges the girls in the hall, pretending to be a gorilla.
Michael’s class confirms what Michael has gradually started to understand outside of the classroom: that humans and animals are similar—or at least connected. While the class discusses evolution as a relic of the past, Michael fixates on its relevance to his present situation. It makes him consider the possibility that he can evolve into something stronger and new.
Themes
During recess, Michael is too tired to play football well. Leaky asks what is wrong with him. Mrs. Dando asks Michael about the baby, and Michael says he is afraid she will stop breathing. Mrs. Dando comforts Michael. Michael considers telling Mrs. Dando about the creature but runs back to the football game. On the bus home, Michael shows his skeleton drawing to a man who smells like pee; Michael says there is a person in his garage, but the man is too busy telling a story about a monkey in a circus who was trained to make tea.
For Michael, football represents a masculine mode of coping with emotions. Football is an activity that views preoccupation and feelings as signs of weakness. Therefore, Michael is only engaged in football when he wants to escape his feelings, not when he is trying to express and work through them. Michael is torn between sharing his feelings—to Mrs. Dando or to the man on the bus—and ignoring them through football.
Themes
