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Chapter 15
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
Before dawn the next morning, Michael brings the creature leftover 27 and 53. While the creature slurps, he explains that, when he lived in the garden, he would eat Ernie Myers’s leftover 27 and 53; Ernie Myers used to look right through the creature as if he couldn’t see him. Michael asks if the creature is dead The creature laughs. Michael says that the baby is in the hospital. Coughing, the creature asks Michael for brown ale, the kind Ernie used to drink.
The fact that Ernie had not been able to see the creature suggests that there is something special about Michael that allows him to see the creature. Whereas Ernie was an old man, Michael is a child, and children are usually associated with imagination. This suggests that, to see the creature, the seer must be endowed with imagination, or at least be inclined to see more in something than what appears on the surface.
Themes
Michael says that there is a girl named Mina who could help the creature. When the creature refuses to meet Mina, Michael feels another trembling fit coming. Michael says he doesn’t know what to do; the garage will collapse, and the baby and the creature are sick. Michael asks what the creature wants to be called. The creature says, “Mr. Nobody.” The creature tells Michael to leave. Leaving, Michael asks the creature to think of the baby. Reluctantly, the creature agrees.
Michael views the creature as a bridge between himself and the baby. Michael constantly worries that the creature is not real, but when it comes to the baby, the creature is very real, possessing, in Michael’s mind, the power to help the baby simply by thinking about her. Instinctually, Michael believes in a passageway between the baby and the creature in which each can have a real, tangible effect on the other.
Themes
Outside, the blackbird is singing on the roof. Michael hears hooting, and a group of owls flies across the sky. Michael sees a pale face in Mina’s window. He puts his hands together and hoots. A hoot replies.
The fact that Michael and Mina take to communicating with each other in the language of birds, suggests that there is not such a firm distinction between the animal and human world as it may seem.
Themes
