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The Way It All Changed
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 feels like he's in a trance as they pack up camp and run. He carries the gun until they hear the Recruiters' whistles, and then starts to feel more himself as he takes some of Rose's items. They run until the following evening, crying and grieving. They erect two tents that night and sleep all together. Though Rose sleeps against Frenchie, he can barely feel her. He feels like something changed after he killed Travis. Frenchie admits to himself that he killed a man, that RiRi is dead, and that misses his parents more than he has in years. They continue to run for the next several days. Minerva is unresponsive and rides on Chi-Boy's back.
Missing his parents shows that, for Frenchie, killing Travis has thrust him uncomfortably into an adult role that he never expected to be in. Now that he's on the other side, he sees all that he lost by leaving his childhood behind and that becoming an adult in this world means coming to terms both with the violence he'll experience, as well as the violence that he'll inflict on others out of necessity.
Themes
On the fourth day, Miig calls Frenchie up to the front of the line. Frenchie complies slowly, thinking that he could just die. Miig says that he didn't want to live when Isaac couldn't escape. He kept going because he made a promise to himself to go back and save Isaac. He ran for days until he found a Cree family. The family gave him food and clothes, and told him about the small Anishnaabe settlements sprinkled around. This is when Miig met Dad. Miig promised to show Dad and his Council to the capital in exchange for a gun. The Council believed that they could talk sense into the government. Dad gave Miig the rifle when they got close.
Miig tries to impress upon Frenchie that while they will inevitably lose people, it's still important that he keep working toward making the world a better place and saving others, as Miig did by working with Dad in order to return to Isaac. This also shows how important of a motivator love is and suggests that as Frenchie continues to fall in love with Rose, his own motivations will become clearer to him.
Themes
Frenchie thinks of how Mom changed after Dad didn't come back. Frenchie knows that Dad went into the city because he loved Mom, Frenchie, and Mitch. Miig resumes his story and says that he walked back to the school and sat for two days, staring at it. He knew it was a suicide mission. On the third day, Miig followed a pickup truck leaving the school, hid himself in the back, and when the driver stopped to urinate, Miig held him at gunpoint and said he needed to get into the school. The man looked at Miig quizzically and said that Indians enter the schools to die—harvesting marrow kills them. Miig punched and kicked the man and asked where the people were.
For Miig, learning the truth about what happens in the schools is one of the most traumatic and horrifying experiences of his life. His violence toward this man shows that Miig's emotional state makes him more likely to behave cruelly, even if the man possibly doesn't deserve this kind of treatment. This also reinforces Miig's assertion that they and the Recruiters are somewhat the same—they all have the capacity to behave violently like this.
Themes
The man said that the last group of people was "used up," and they're in the back of the truck. Miig pulled aside a tarp and found crates. The man told him to look inside. Miig found rows of glass tubes and pulled one out. It was filled with thick liquid and labeled with a serial number, age, sex, and tribe. He dug until he found a vial that he identified as Isaac’s. Without thinking, Miig shot the man and left. He drove to a lake, hiked in with the crates, poured each vial into the ground, and "sang them home." Miig grabs Frenchie's shoulder and says that people sometimes have to do things they never thought they'd do, but that Frenchie needs to make sure his intentions remain good.
That Miig took the crates and performed the burial rites for these murdered people shows the importance of ceremony. It gave Miig a sense of closure and allowed him to feel as though he'd performed his responsibility to his people, and it allowed the deceased to join the ancestors. This is one of the many reasons why preserving Indigenous languages and culture is so important: it allows living people to connect with the dead, and the dead to be properly honored.
Themes
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