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Chapter 12
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Walk Two Moons, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Judgment, Perspective, and Storytelling
Parents, Children, and Growing Up
Grief
Nature
Summary
Analysis
Next, Sal tells Gram and Gramps about Mr. Birkway, her English teacher. Mr. Birkway is energetic and loves English. His eyes are deep and can make you feel like he wants nothing more than to listen to you. On the first day of school, Mr. Birkway asks students for their summer journals. The kids are nervous and whispering—they don’t want Mr. Birkway to read them. Sal doesn’t have one, but Mr. Birkway says it’s not a problem. The students whisper among themselves, wondering if they wrote about one another. Later, these journals will cause a whole lot of trouble.
It’s significant that what Sal notices and admires about Mr. Birkway is his attentive listening, as this is a skill that Sal is developing as she hears other people’s stories (like Gram and Gramps’s in the previous chapter). However, Mr. Birkway’s students seem anxious about his intention to read their private thoughts, and this passage foreshadows that the journals are going to cause conflict.
Themes
