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Chapter 6
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 doesn’t let go of the knife. He asks the girl who she is. Todd knows what girls are because he’s heard about them in the Noise of other men. He knows that, like boys, girls reach adulthood at 13 and eventually get married. This girl doesn’t quite look like the ones he knows from Noise, however, because her hair is short and she isn’t wearing a dress. Todd realizes he can’t hear any Noise from her, and this makes him nervous. She doesn’t talk.
Todd’s tight grip on his knife suggests that, while he is not as violent as Aaron, he nevertheless still finds himself thinking about violence when he’s confronted with something that he doesn’t understand and which frightens him. Even though Noise has often misled Todd, he finds the girl’s lack of Noise even more disturbing, showing how Todd takes comfort in the familiar.
Themes
Todd tells Manchee to watch the girl while he looks at the map in the front of his Ma’s journal. Just as he’s figuring out where to go, he gets hit in the side of his head. He realizes that because the girl has no Noise, she was able to sneak up on him while Manchee wasn’t looking. The girl also looks shocked about what she did, and Todd notices that she’s bleeding from her upper arm.
Although Todd and the girl get off to a hostile start, this passage emphasizes what the two of them have in common, with each fearing what they don’t understand about the other. The girl’s inability to seriously hurt Todd, even when she attacks by surprise, suggests that she also struggles with the question of when it’s justified to use violence.
Themes
Todd tells the girl he isn’t going to hurt her, but she keeps looking at his knife. He lowers it but doesn’t let go as he searches his pack for a medipak to stop her bleeding. The girl is wary at first, but eventually turns her arm to accept the medipak. Todd introduces himself, but just as he’s asking if the girl can understand him, he hears a bunch of Noise coming toward them. Todd tries to pull the girl up, but they can’t get moving quickly enough and Aaron sees them.
This passage shows how even without verbal communication, Todd and the girl manage to reach an understanding. Although understanding with the girl seems to show the benefits of not immediately resorting to violence, Aaron’s sudden reappearance raises the question of whether Todd would have been better off drawing his knife against Aaron the first time.
Themes
