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Chapter 36
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
That night, Michael can’t sleep. He watches the hours pass on his clock. There are no owl calls. The next morning, Michael yells at Dad that he won’t go to school, but Dad yells that Michael will do as he is told. Michael curses defiantly, prompting Dad to kick the table leg and spill the milk. He then yells for Michael to get out of his sight, and then he pulls Michael to him and says “I love you” over and over. As both Michael and Dad cry, Dad says they have to believe everything will be all right. Mina comes to the door holding Whisper and says she needs Michael’s help. Dad says that he will pick Michael up from Mina’s after the operation.
Michael insists on staying home from school, likely because he wants to do the only thing he knows how to do to help the baby: listen to her heart. Dad and Michael argue not because they are actually angry at each other but because they are both exhausted from trying to believe that everything will be okay. Neither really knows that the baby will survive heart surgery, so their argument comes from a place of fear. They make up only when they find the strength again to “believe that everything will be alright.”
Themes
Mina leads Michael to her garden. Talking sternly, Mina throws Whisper into the house and closes the door. Mina explains that the blackbird chicks are out. Michael and Mina sit on the stoop and watch little brown balls with gaping beaks wander beneath the hedge. Soon, two blackbirds land in the yard and drop worms into the chicks’ beaks. Dad comes into the garden, and Mina gesticulates for him to be quiet. Tiptoeing over, Dad comments that the fledglings are lovely. Dad embraces Michael and tells him to keep believing. As Dad drives away, Michael and Mina continue watching the blackbirds feed the chicks.
Significantly, the baby’s heart surgery and the chicks’ first day out of the nest fall on the same day. The chicks, in the very way that they grow and become strong, are exposed to the world and in danger of death—in their case, predators threaten their safety. Similarly, the baby, in undergoing a surgery that is necessary to make her strong, faces potential death. In this way, both the chicks and the baby show how danger and weakness are necessary steps in the process to health and independence.
Themes
