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Chapter 23
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
At school the next day, Jared sits with George and Sarah at lunch. The two of them get into a long argument about the best companions in Doctor Who, but Jared isn’t really engaged. After school, his mom drives up and tells him to get in. Jared does, but he leaves his seat belt off. Jared’s mom tells him that she doesn’t deserve this treatment from him, and Jared asks if she remembers what she said to him in his room. They sit in silence for the rest of the way home.
The fact that Jared isn’t engaged in the conversation about a TV show underscores how he’s focused on more mature issues than his peers—namely, he’s preoccupied with how to deal with his mother. Even leaving his seatbelt off in the car hints at the fact that Jared understands she could be violent with him at any time, so he might need to make an escape.
Themes
Jared tries to go to the basement when they get home, but his mom makes him bacon and eggs, so he stays upstairs. As Jared eats, he explains that he didn’t want his dad to be homeless while he was cut off disability. His mom says that she hates Phil and points out that he was playing Jared. Jared asks if that’s why she abandoned him for months and left him to pay the bills. His mom says that it was all she could do not to strangle Jared, to which Jared replies, “that’s love.”
Jared recognizes that because his mother uses violence as a punishment, the way she also mixes violence and love is deeply unsettling for him. His sarcastic comment that not strangling him is “love” suggests that her violent tendencies make him skeptical about whether or not she really loves him.
Themes
As Jared and his mom do the dishes together, Sarah pops in. She greets Jared’s mom and tells a bad joke about a cow, and Jared’s mom gets annoyed because she thinks that Sarah is calling her a cow. Sarah nervously asks for the cookbook back, and Jared gives it to her. Jared’s mom tells him that he better be using condoms with Sarah, calling her crazy. Jared tells his mom that Sarah was kicked out of her house, acknowledging that Jared’s mom was kicked out of her house too. Jared’s mom replies that she was alone and had to make her own way, but Jared points out that Sarah is taking care of her dying grandmother—everyone has issues.
Here, Jared acknowledges that his mom’s dysfunctional family caused her to grow up in certain ways, as she had to work and pay her own bills as a teenager. And yet, even though she gained some responsibility, she did not learn how to take care of others in her life (like Jared) and has maintained a teenage lifestyle well into her adulthood. As a result, Jared has to learn to take care of himself when his mom is unable to. This suggests that while a dysfunctional family can cause people to grow up more quickly than they would otherwise, it doesn’t prevent them from also making mistakes and continuing that dysfunctional dynamic.
Themes
Jared’s mom presses her forehead against his, and he asks her where she went while she was away. She hugs him but doesn’t say anything. The next day, they get two new tenants at the house, and dinner turns into a party. Jared goes downstairs, not feeling like faking a good time. His mom texts him a picture of himself, captioned “Kill n die.”
Jared’s mom tries to show her love for him through some warmth and affection. But her later implication that she would “kill n die” for him—hearkening back to the earlier incident of running over Richie’s dogs with her car—shows that she still uses violence as a way to express love.
Themes
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