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Chapter 8
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, Manchee, and the girl walk through the swamp until night falls. Todd gets out a flashlight to look at his map. There is another settlement on the map, right at the bottom near where it ends. Todd points to that place on the map and asks the girl if that’s where she’s from. She still doesn’t speak.
Even after they have learned to tentatively trust each other, Todd and the girl remain cautious. This chapter deals with Todd’s struggles to adapt to a world without Noise, with the girl’s refusal to talk adding to the sense of silence.
Themes
All of a sudden, the girl points at something through the trees and starts walking in that direction. Todd warns her that they have to follow the map, but she doesn’t stop, so he follows her with Manchee. They all come to a tree that looks like it’s been recently burned.
The girl’s motives in this passage are mysterious to Todd, showing once again how he struggles to understand people without Noise after he has gotten so used to everyone having it.
Themes
The girl again goes off into the darkness, and Todd follows her with his flashlight, nervous about crocs in the swamp. When he catches up to her, he sees something big and metal that reminds him of a fissionbike. When he tells the girl to stop moving so fast, she does, causing Todd to realize she actually can understand him.
The more time Todd and the girl spend with each other, the more they reveal about themselves, sometimes unintentionally, as the girl does here when she reacts to Todd’s words. This all emphasizes the benefits of spending time with people rather than relying on Noise from a distance.
Themes
Todd realizes that the big metal thing in the swamp is actually a spaceship. He asks the girl if it’s her ship that she crashed there. Manchee starts barking, so Todd points his flashlight in Manchee’s direction. He sees two corpses of people who look like they died in the crash and were dragged out of it. Todd notices that one of them is a woman, the first he’s ever seen, so he guesses that they must be the girl’s mother and father. The girl still has a blank look as she opens a door on the side of the metal wreckage and goes inside.
Once again, Todd realizes that this girl who seems so different from him actually has many things in common. In addition to understanding Todd’s language, this girl also seemingly understands what it’s like to be an orphan. Although she lost her parents recently, she similarly struggles to express her feelings, which Todd misinterprets as her having no feelings.
Themes
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