Previous
Chapter 37
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
When Viola speaks, imitating Ben’s voice, Todd imagines it’s what his actual Ma would’ve sounded like. In the journal, Todd’s Ma tells him about his birth and what life was like in the early days of the settlement. At the start, everyone is hopeful. David (the man who will later become Mayor Prentiss) is a good organizer who was a caretaker on the settlement ship. He convinces Elizabeth, the first mayor, to build the settlement on the far side of the swamp, where there will be some isolation from the other Noise in the New World.
Although Ben and Cillian prepared Todd well for adulthood, he lacked any female presence in his life until recently. While Viola is more of a peer to Todd than a parent, she nevertheless helps educate Todd, teaching him things about the world that his Ma might have if she’d lived. Todd’s Ma’s journal brings to life a world before Prentisstown, showing Todd how the violent paranoia of Prentisstown was never guaranteed to occur.
Themes
Ma’s journal continues. Todd’s Pa died young, so Ben and Cillian help Ma with her fields. Ma is hopeful about the settlement’s future, although she doesn’t necessarily agree with all the things the preacher Aaron is saying. All the New World settlers are shocked to find Spackle, which none of the scouts detected, but which seem to be innocent and intelligent creatures, despite the fact that they don’t seem to have a language.
Ma reveals what the settlers thought in the New World before Mayor Prentiss took over the settlement and began telling his own version of the story. She describes how, out of the context of war, it is possible to look at the Spackle as wonderous, sentient beings rather than violent enemies or rivals for scarce resources.
Themes
Still in the journal, Todd’s Ma says she wants him to remember that there’s always hope and wonder in the world. She transcribes a song that she used to sing to Todd and that her own mother used to sing to her. In the present, Viola tries to sing it, and Todd is so overwhelmed with emotion that he suggests saving the rest of the journal, including his Ma’s last words to him, for later.
Although in the past, Todd’s failure to heed his journal was a personal failing that led to him missing Ben’s note about Prentisstown attacking Farbranch, here, Todd’s request for Viola to stop is more understandable. Todd has already absorbed a lot of new information in a short period of time, and he wants to make sense of it before moving on to something as important as his Ma’s final words. Todd has begun to better recognize his own limitations and knows he can’t take in any more of the journal at the moment.
Themes
All of a sudden, Todd realizes that he knows what Viola is thinking, that he can “read” her even without Noise. He knows she’s thinking about how her own parents also came to the New World looking for hope, and that it hurts her to think of them, but in a good way. Todd and Viola sit and wait for dawn.
The epiphany in this passage that Todd has is the culmination of all his growth so far. Todd had gotten in the habit of using Noise to learn about the people around him, and he thought that perhaps becoming an adult meant learning how to tame his own Noise, hiding unwanted thoughts. But Todd learns that instead of trying to control Noise, he can also ignore it altogether, and that learning the empathy to understand another person’s true thoughts is a different skill altogether from Noise.
Themes
Get the entire The Knife of Never Letting Go LitChart as a printable PDF.
