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Magic Words
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Marrow Thieves, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Cyclical Histories, Language, and Indigenous Oppression
Family and Coming of Age
Humans and Nature
Trauma, Identity, and Pride
Summary
Analysis
Frenchie struggles to sleep for a week. He has nightmares about Mom and Dad when he sleeps, so he spends time with RiRi and tells her about Mitch. It's painful to talk about him, but Frenchie feels as though he remembers his family better the more he talks. He wakes up one morning freezing cold, having fallen asleep in RiRi's tent. Outside, Wab and Chi-Boy step away from each other awkwardly and in a way that makes Frenchie feel especially awkward. He tries to engage Wab in conversation about breakfast, but she narrows her eyes at him.
The fact that Frenchie can understand the importance of talking about his blood family to remembering them acts as a small representation of the novel's greater point that only through reciting and passing down traditional stories and customs will those customs stay alive. Choosing to celebrate them allows people to continue to celebrate themselves and remember that they're a part of a larger community.
Themes
Everyone sits in a circle to wait for breakfast and Miig passes out watches to those who will hunt today. Miig remarks that they used to not need watches, but now, nobody knows how to tell time by the sky. Zheegwon and Tree open cans of condensed milk and Minerva stashes the lids in her bag. After a breakfast of mush, Miig leads the hunters an hour away from the camp. He notes that he's seen signs of deer and sends everyone off in different directions. They're supposed to walk for one hour, wait for two, and then meet back at the starting point. Frenchie has the rifle today and is careful to keep his pace steady, which will make it easier to track someone who doesn't return on time. He settles himself in some tree roots.
Miig's comment about the watches shows that in this world, Indigenous people are already losing valuable information as they're forced northward and into the schools. It's not just that the youth don't speak the language; it's also that the adults around don't have all the information that their ancestors once had to keep them safe. This also means that the novel's contemporary Indigenous people are losing skills that can keep them safe from the Recruiters.
Themes
Frenchie lets his mind wander and thinks that the world suddenly went mad when it poisoned drinking water, created an environment prone to earthquakes, and then started harvesting Indigenous people for medicine. He wonders if they're that different from anyone else, and if the Indigenous people would act the same way if the positions were switched. Frenchie wonders if he'd have been able to torture a child for marrow if Mitch, Mom, or Dad had gotten sick.
As far as Frenchie is concerned, the white powers that be have created the current mess and are now reaching for wildly inhumane ways to fix it, something that he questions whether Indigenous people would've been able to do in the first place. This begins to speak out against the settler state as a whole and suggests that this whole conflict could've been easily avoided.
Themes
As Frenchie listens and thinks, he suddenly hears footsteps and lifts his head. The moose is as huge as a tree. Frenchie aims at the moose's head, but then lowers it to the chest, which Miig always says is "the sure target." The moose raises its head and looks right at Frenchie. Frenchie thinks it seems like the moose is ancient and watched all the destruction happen. The moose would also be food for a week, hide for blankets, and a surefire way to impress Rose. Frenchie realizes that they can't eat all the meat before it rots, and Miig won't let them smoke it for fear of being found. He lowers the rifle.
For Frenchie, the moose symbolizes the natural world that's unchanged, watching the world change around it. Taking down the moose would be taking down any hope of restoring that natural world and the history stored in the memories of both the moose and the land itself, which bears the scars of the trauma that's been inflicted upon it. Choosing to let it live shows that Frenchie is choosing to not act like the government that's after his marrow.
Themes
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As Frenchie returns to the meeting point, he vacillates between feeling good about his decision and ashamed that RiRi will go hungry. He feels better when he sees that Chi-Boy and Miig both got turkeys. Wab is late getting back. They wait anxiously for almost 40 minutes before she slips into the clearing. Wab says that everything is fine, but Frenchie tells the reader that a week later, Wab will reveal to them what she saw.
Frenchie's shame about RiRi going hungry shows how dedicated he is to his family and how much responsibility he feels to care for them. With this, the novel suggests that Frenchie is beginning to step into a more adult role in his family and take on more responsibility for keeping them safe and fed.
Themes
