Anger, Violence, and Radicalization Theme Analysis

Every child slated to be unwound has every right to be angry—deciding to unwind one’s child suggests, to kids like Connor who grew up in loving families, that their parents don’t love or care about them anymore, while for kids like Risa who grow up as wards of the state, being unwound reflects the government’s unwillingness to value the lives they’re supposed to care for. In this sense, anger is a natural state in which to find oneself in the world of Unwind, but the novel also goes to great lengths to show that there are a variety of different paths available to angry and traumatized teens facing the reality of being unwound. Anger and desperation, the novel suggests, can be productive and cathartic when people develop the tools to deal with their anger—but if individuals never get those tools, their unbridled anger can lead them down a dangerous and destructive path and, in extreme cases, to radicalization and terrorism.

Connor’s parents choose to unwind him because he’s angry, which emphasizes how, within the world of Unwind, openly expressing one’s emotions can be a liability. For vulnerable individuals like teenage Connor, anger can literally put them in danger—no matter how reasonable their feelings might be. Though he grows up in a loving and supportive family, once he reaches his teen years, Connor finds that his anger consumes him. He begins to act out at school, get into fights, and take risks such as sitting on a freeway overpass for the thrill of it. It is precisely this reckless, anger-fueled behavior that makes his parents choose to have Connor unwound.

However, Connor begins to reevaluate how he manages his anger and impulsiveness once he’s on the run with Risa, who’s also angry but is far more adept at hiding it. Further, Risa is calculating in how she goes about achieving longer-term goals—primarily staying alive, something that Connor’s anger and impulsiveness jeopardizes at every turn—and she begins to teach these skills to Connor. As the two spend more time together, they spend more time plotting for their survival rather than actively fighting for it. Over the course of the few months that Connor and Risa are together, Connor transforms entirely from a terrifying, out-of-control boy to a trusted and beloved leader at the Graveyard, a refugee camp of sorts for Unwinds in the Arizona desert. There, his growing love for Risa, coupled with the mentorship that the Admiral, the leader of the Graveyard, shows him, Connor learns to channel his anger to improve conditions at the Graveyard and ultimately, ends up taking the Admiral’s place after the Admiral becomes too ill to fill the role. Importantly, he says outright that he likes channeling his anger in this way, as it gives him more control over his world and gives him a sense of purpose beyond just surviving to his 18th birthday (at which point he’s too old to be unwound and will therefore be safe).

In terms of his relationship to anger, Lev, a 13-year-old who briefly travels with Connor and Risa, is in many ways Connor’s exact opposite. Lev grows up in a religious family that believes in offering children as tithes—that is, sacrifices to be unwound, something they believe is called for in the Bible. Because of this, Lev grows up believing that his eventual sacrifice makes him superior to everyone else, as his religious beliefs state that tithes are almost more than human. All of this means that Lev isn’t angry about the prospect of being unwound but is unspeakably angry when Connor “ruins” his unwinding by kidnapping him from his parents’ car on the way to the harvest camp. Though Lev initially directs his anger at Connor and Risa, his opinions on unwinding and being a tithe begin to change as he sees firsthand the horrifying consequences of unwinding: he watches a traveling companion with an Unwind’s temporal lobe, CyFi, fall at the feet of the Unwind’s parents begging to not be unwound—this Unwind, Lev sees, has no idea that he’s been unwound. This fills Lev with unspeakable anger at the entire establishment that promotes unwinding, as well as his religion which glorifies the practice, and ultimately leads him to get involved with the clappers, a terrorist organization that essentially engages in suicide bombing by replacing participants’ blood with explosive liquid.

Unwind takes great care to lay out exactly how and why Lev reaches the point of radicalization. His anger, combined with his yearning for the sense of community he felt as a child in his church, makes him vulnerable to recruiters who offer him community, purpose, and a method of getting revenge. The trajectories of Lev and his clapper companions shows how perfectly normal people have the potential to become clappers when they find themselves angry, disillusioned, and isolated from the kind of mentorship or purpose that Connor receives from the Admiral. However, the novel also forcefully condemns the clappers’ actions by making it clear that dying and taking others with them won’t fix anything; the thought that it will is, the novel suggests, a “dangerous deception.”

Importantly, when it does come time for Lev to “clap” and commit his suicide bombing, Lev chooses not to, and instead turns himself in. While Lev isn’t able to fully come to grips with his anger and his choices by the end of the novel, his childhood pastor, Pastor Dan, suggests that Lev’s choice to back out and turn himself in was far more meaningful than clapping and dying ever would’ve been. With this, and through Connor’s trajectory of channeling his anger and becoming a major resistance fighter in the process, Unwind encourages readers to recognize that violence does nothing to help one’s anger or the situation at hand. Rather, channeling one’s anger and using it for good is one of the most meaningful and productive things a person can do.