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Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Unwind, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Inequality, Injustice, and the Law
Anger, Violence, and Radicalization
Activism, Compassion, and Atonement
Morality and Perspective
Summary
Analysis
That night, the teens file out and into an alley, where a small delivery truck with an ice cream cone on the side waits. Sonia stops Risa and Connor and Risa notices Hannah standing nearby. Hannah says that Didi can’t go with the teens—instead, Hannah and her husband will take Didi and say they were storked. Connor inserts himself into the conversation and asks if Hannah wants the baby. Risa reminds him that he doesn’t want her and Connor walks away. As soon as Hannah takes Didi, Risa feels relieved and empty. She climbs into the back of the truck, which is filled with other scared teens. Risa feels furious that she misses Didi and wonders if, in the days before the Heartland War, women who got abortions felt the same: free, yet vaguely regretful.
Risa’s ability to wonder if her emotions are similar to those women who got abortions shows that she makes an effort to empathize with others, something that in turn allows her to develop compassion, and later helps turn her into a better activist. That Didi gets what appears to be a happy ending suggests that Connor’s choice to steal her, while risky, may have given Didi a shot at life that she wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Themes
Risa thinks of her time caring for infants at the state home. The infant wing was overflowing with unwanted babies that the state could barely feed. One nurse often said that it’s impossible to change laws without changing human nature first, and other nurses would always respond that it’s impossible to change human nature without changing the law. Risa can’t decide if it’s worse to have thousands of unwanted babies or to make them disappear before they’re born. The nurse encouraged Risa to love the babies she could and pray for the rest, so Risa always named a few rather than let the computer do it. Connor interrupts her and they discuss Didi for a moment. A kid asks the driver where they’re going, but he doesn’t know. Another kid says they’re going somewhere called “the graveyard.” Chilled, Risa curls up and lets Connor put an arm around her.
The nurses’ debate over whether laws or human nature need to change first begins to question the law’s role in dictating how society feels about certain issues. The fact that the Bill of Life successfully normalized unwinding in the eyes of many suggests that it’s very possible for laws to change beliefs by enforcing a standard of morality, while the sheer number of people who have already helped Risa and help her going forward show that this isn’t always the case. The differences in opinion here again show how many ways there are to think about what’s happening, while Risa’s recollection of so many unwanted babies makes the point that, in any case, something needs to change.
Themes
