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The Four Winds
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
Wab says that before people left the cities, the cities were teeming with desperate, hungry people. People lived in cardboard structures in alleys, and others huddled in the hallways of apartment buildings. Wab lived on the top floor with her mother, who drank and saw lots of men. Sometimes the men would try to touch Wab, but she could usually defend herself. Wab and her mother ended up on the street after the building burned down. Wab was ten. They lived in a dumpster with a mute Malaysian man named Freddie. Freddie's Taiwanese wife had been taken away while they were at the food bank, so most Indigenous people stopped going to the food banks. They knew they'd end up being murdered eventually.
The image of the cities that Wab creates suggests that, at this point in time, cities are a representation of the worst parts of humanity and the lengths that those in power will go to keep people from improving their lives. By making the food banks a dangerous place for Indigenous people, the government effectively tells them that they can't trust anything—even if the measures put in place are purported to be helpful.
Themes
Wab's mother traded sexual favors for alcohol, so Wab had to feed herself. She was a strong runner so after they cut the phone lines and blocked cell service, Wab began delivering messages and running errands in exchange for soup or bread. She ran for a year until she was caught by "everyday assholes" with a bogus run. They sent a drug-addicted Indian to give her a letter and pay upfront with a box of Danishes. Wab ate two and ran to the appointed building, where men with baseball bats led her into an old deli. The men started laughing, and men sitting inside silently watched Wab walk to the back. There was a man with red hair there. His teeth were filed to points.
Here, Wab shows her tenacity and ability to fend for herself, even as a young child. (Remember that she's about eleven years old here.) The men—and the horror to come—remind the reader that though Wab is certainly at risk of violence for her marrow, she's also uniquely at risk of sexual violence because she's female. These intersections among different elements of Wab’s identity show that, even within the oppressed Indigenous population, there are still those who are more at risk than others.
Themes
Wab tried to give the man his letter and leave, but the guards moved closer as the man took the letter and touched Wab's hand. He explained that he wants to start a business delivering messages, but nobody wants to pay his prices when Wab will perform the same task for a tin of food. He showed Wab that the envelope is empty. She turned to run, but guards forced her into the broken freezer. The red-haired man came inside with Wab, untied his pants, and told her to stop her business. With a knife, he cut from Wab's forehead to her chest and then took her pants off and raped her. Wab stopped feeling anything, but she learned later that she was there for two days as she was repeatedly assaulted by all of the men at the deli. She limped home when they released her, and Freddie tried to clean up her face.
Blacking out and not remembering what happened to her in the freezer is one of the human body's natural ways of protecting itself from trauma. That Wab doesn't remember it shows that with such intense trauma, she can only share her story by using the accounts of others. In other words, though this happened to Wab, her body tried to protect her by not giving her the tools and the memories to even have the story in the first place.
Themes
Wab says that when she was healed enough, she started to walk out of the city and into the wilderness. She saw the man who set up the run last week in the woods. RiRi interrupts, terrified, and asks if the man is coming to take Wab away. Nearly hysterical, RiRi asks why people are being murdered. Frenchie wonders how long RiRi was there and what he can do, but Miig calls RiRi forward to hear Story.
The choice to tell Story to RiRi shows that Miig believes that learning of the violence and the danger in the world means that a child then must know the reason why the danger exists. By sharing with RiRi, he's going to better prepare her to make sense of the violence she sees going forward.
Themes
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