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Chapter 9
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Knife of Never Letting Go, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Cost of Violence
Information vs. Knowledge
Bigotry and Misogyny
Humanity’s Connection to Nature
Summary
Analysis
Todd wants to get moving, but he waits for the girl to come back out of the wrecked ship. When she does, she has a box with a button she can press to turn it into an instant campfire. She also has food that seems to be dried fruit, so Todd eats some, and he offers some to Manchee too. He warns her they can’t stay, because even if Aaron is dead, there will be others coming. The girl flinches at “Aaron,” suggesting that she recognizes the name.
Eventually, the girl puts away her instant fire by pressing another button, then gets out her own flashlight. Todd is surprised at how calm she seems, considering the nearby adults seem to be her dead parents. He and Manchee lead the way through the dark swamp while the girl follows. They keep walking, and even though there’s no Noise behind them, Todd forces them to go until nearly dawn, when he can’t go any longer without resting. He plans to stop for just five minutes, he but ends up accidentally sleeping for an hour or two. The sound of Noise wakes him up.
Once again, Todd views the girl as callous when in fact, she, like him, has had to bottle up her emotions in order to find the strength to move forward. Todd doesn't make the connection that he himself is also pressing onward on his journey even though he recently lost his own parents, Ben and Cillian, who may have died in the fighting with Mayor Prentiss’s men. In addition to the limits in his understanding, Todd also struggles against the limits of his own body—he can’t ignore his exhaustion.
Themes
Todd is frightened at first, but realizes the noise is just a cassor, a type of big bird with a long neck that lives in the swamp. The cassor begins to chase Manchee, causing the girl to laugh. It wants food, so Todd gives it a small amount of cheese that Ben packed for him.
The cassor provides a counterpoint to the crocodiles, showing that nature isn’t necessarily hostile—in fact, in this case, it helps bring Todd and the girl closer together.
Themes
Todd and the girl keep walking, and eventually the ground begins to get drier as they leave the swamp. The girl lends Todd her binoculars, which are much better than his, and he uses them to scout the area. Todd wonders about where the girl came from, and all of a sudden, he realizes that if she comes from a place with no Noise, she must not have caught the Noise germ yet. When she catches Noise, it will kill her, like all the other girls and women. Todd realizes as he thinks this that the girl can probably hear his Noise, even though she doesn’t have any of her own.
The girl’s binoculars help Todd to literally see farther out in the landscape, but they also symbolize how the girl helps Todd to metaphorically see and understand new things. But as Todd learns when he remembers the Noise germ, caring about someone can also be difficult because it means wanting to protect them from harm.
Themes
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