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Chapter 8
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
The mother is 19, but she feels like a child. She cradles her newborn and navigates back alleys just after dawn. She passes a dumpster and thinks that just after the Bill of Life was passed, girls like her left so many infants in dumpsters that it stopped making the news. The mother wryly laughs that the Bill of Life was supposed to protect life, but it just made it cheap. She’s thankful for the Storking Initiative, which gives her an alternative. She chooses a home on a nice street and settles her baby on the welcome mat. The mother has always known she’d end up storking her baby; she’s too young to be a mother and has no desire, either. As she leaves, she vows to be smart about her second chance. She’s thankful she has one.
The mother’s inner monologue reveals that even if the Bill of Life was supposed to solve the issue of abortion (and did, in a sense, since abortion is illegal in this world), it still didn’t really solve the problem of what women do when they get pregnant and don’t want to be pregnant. While the mother is understandably thrilled that she has a second chance at life because of storking, this also means that her baby may have to suffer unintended consequences—such as ending up in a state home and being unwound later, like Risa.
Themes
