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Part 4: Chapter 4
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Trash, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Childhood, Poverty, and Injustice
Corruption, Power, and Theft
Community, Loyalty, and Solidarity
Intelligence, Education, and Street Smarts
Summary
Analysis
The police come quietly as the boys were fold the map. Rat doesn’t know how he heard the ladder creak—maybe it was José Angelico and Gabriel Olondriz’s help. He opens the hatch as Raphael freezes. Rat slaps Raphael and they climb silently onto the roof. They climb to the next roof and they make their way down, past people’s windows who just stare. Suddenly, there is shouting and whistles. A policeman comes over the ledge, looking straight at Rat, and he reaches for his gun—but the boys manage to climb further and they slip out of reach.
Rat’s heightened sensory alertness—no doubt cultivated from a life on the streets—saves the boys lives since he senses, in the nick of time, that the police are surreptitiously approaching to raid their tiny room. Once again, the boys draw strength from their sense of solidarity with José Angelico and Gabriel Olondriz. It really seems like they are all one united team, which connotes an innate sense of community among them.
Themes
