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Chapter 11
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
When Michael gets home, Dr. Death is in the kitchen with the baby. When Dr. Death leaves, Mum curses and cries, saying that the baby can’t thrive in such a messy house. Dad explains to Michael that the baby has to go back to the hospital for a while. Michael says he’ll help with the house, but no one hears; no one sees his skeleton drawing, either. The family has tea, and then Mum goes upstairs to pack for the hospital. Michael goes upstairs to watch.
Michael wants his parents to treat him like an adult—he wants them to see him as able and willing to help them restore the house. Yet his desire for them to notice and praise the drawing he made at school shows that he wants them to see him as a child, too. But Mum and Dad are too stressed about the baby to notice Michael at all, leaving Michael feeling alone in his struggles.
Themes
Michael asks Mum what shoulders are for. Exasperated, Mum ignores Michael. Then, she says that shoulders are where his wings were when he was an angel; Michael’s wings will grow back one day. With tears in her eyes, Mum says the baby used to have wings too, and that’s why she has trouble living on earth. Michael almost tells Mum about the creature. Michael holds the baby and feels where her wings used to be. Michael and Dad drive Mum and the baby to the hospital. When they get back, Dad starts painting the walls.
Mum’s analogy draws a connection not between birds and humans but between angels and humans. Angels—as winged, mythical beings that have characteristics of both humans and birds—are an imaginative liminal space between birds and humans. This suggests that humans have a spiritual rather than a literal connection to birds. The analogy also associates wings with the possibility of healing and transformation.
Themes
