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Part 5: Chapter 1
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
People live in shacks on the other side of the graveyard among the poor people’s graves. The broken graves sadden Raphael the most. When people can’t afford the rent, the guards break the boxes and dump the bodies aside in a rotting pile. Finally, Gardo finds the Angelico grave. Underneath the words “Maria Angelico, wife of José Angelico,” “the brightest light” is etched, which makes Raphael shiver. The boys see Pia Dante’s grave stacked on top and they read out the familiar words “seeds,” “harvest,” and “accomplished.” They are deeply saddened by the thought of José’s little girl, and they don’t know what to do next. Although the police wouldn’t have hesitated, the boys don’t want to bust open a bunch of graves. As they look around for clues, a tiny girl appears and she asks who they’re looking for.
Mulligan expands on the appalling conditions in which the city’s impoverished children live through descriptions of shacks built alongside dug-up graves and rotting bodies, exposing the unsanitary and repulsive nature of life in abject poverty. The boys’ sadness for Pia Dante’s fate once again expresses a sense of community among the poor, since like them, she was a young, poor, orphan. Their sadness similarly demonstrates their strong loyalty to José Angelico and the people he cared about. Meanwhile, the etching on Maria Angelico’s grave once again symbolizes poor people as the bright spot in this corrupt city.
Themes
