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Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Son of a Trickster, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Dysfunctional Families, Responsibility, and Maturity
Love vs. Violence
Escapism and Confronting Problems
The Environment and Human Destruction
Summary
Analysis
Human beings come with an instruction manual: genes. The difference between one person and another is one DNA base pair in every thousand. But human beings all have bodies made of meat, bodies which are transitory vessels built from recycled carbon. Bits of each person have probably been a cricket or a dinosaur. The narrator concludes by saying, “come closer and let me speak to the creatures that swim in your ancient oceans,” or encoded memories that still lie in a person’s blood and bones.
This chapter, again told from the perspective of the unnamed narrator, highlights the connection between human beings and nature, noting that every person contains bits and pieces that were once a part of nature. In calling human bodies “transitory vessels,” the passage also implies that people have a role to play in continuing Earth’s history—in bringing ancient ocean creatures’ memories to the present. This is an important contrast to how the book implies human beings are currently treating nature, as something disposable. This passage thus speaks to the importance of reconnecting with and protecting nature.
Themes
