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Chapter 23
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
Gramps swears at a driver who cuts him off as they leave the Badlands. Usually, when Gramps cusses, Gram threatens to go back to the egg man, whom she once ran off with for three days when Gramps wouldn’t stop cussing. Gram once confided in Sal that she actually doesn’t mind some cussing—and the egg man snored terribly. She explained that she didn’t even remember why she left Gramps. Sometimes, Gram said, you can love someone but still need to go away so you know for sure.
Sal isn’t quite able to put it together yet, but what Gram has to say about the egg man and leaving a relationship could also apply to Momma leaving Sal and Dad. Just like Gram, Momma seems to have loved Sal and Dad deeply—but just as Gram needed time away from Gramps to be sure that she loved him, Momma may have felt the need to go away so she could be sure that she really belonged on the farm in Bybanks.
Themes
Gramps stops that night at a motel near Wall, South Dakota. The only room left has only a king-size waterbed, and Gramps jokes that the three of them will have to “float on this raft” tonight. Gram flops down and giggles. Sal flops down next to her, and Gramps sits on the other side. The bed sloshes, and Gram keeps giggling. That night, Sal dreams of floating on a raft with Momma. They’re staring at the sky, which keeps moving closer. Then, with a popping noise, Sal and Momma are in the sky—and Momma remarks that they can’t be dead. In the morning, Sal gets back in the car with her grandparents, and they ask her to continue Phoebe’s story.
This passage is another example of Sal’s present intertwining with her past, as Gramps’s joke reminds Sal of lying with Momma and talking about floating away on a river. But in Sal’s dream, floating on the raft is associated with death. The meaning of this dream isn’t totally clear, but it seems to suggest that in Sal’s mind, fully reuniting with Momma is only possible in death. This again confirms that it’s impossible for Momma to return to Sal and Dad, though it’s still unclear exactly why that is. Momma’s insistence that they aren’t really dead again suggests that death is difficult to accept and understand. This dream adds further mystery to Momma’s departure and what happened to her on the journey to Lewiston.
Themes
A new message appears the day after Phoebe shows Mr. Winterbottom her suspicious evidence. This one reads, “You can’t keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.” Phoebe brings the message to school and insists it was the lunatic—the messages are clues to help Phoebe find Mrs. Winterbottom.
Phoebe is so caught up in proving her mother was kidnapped that she’s totally unwilling to consider this message’s meaning. It seems to suggest that Mr. Winterbottom has the right idea—by continuing on as usual, he’s trying to keep the “birds of sadness” from “nesting.” More generally, the note suggests that although a person can’t choose what happens to them, they can choose how they respond to events.
Themes
Kids keep asking Phoebe about Mrs. Winterbottom’s trip to London. Sal thinks that Phoebe looks like a whole family of “birds of sadness” are in her hair. Ben gives his report on Prometheus in English class that day, and after school, Mary Lou invites Phoebe and Sal to dinner. Dad agrees that Sal can go and suggests he’ll eat with Margaret.
Sal’s observation that Phoebe has “birds of sadness” in her hair suggests that Phoebe is actively choosing to be miserable and deny reality. Although Mrs. Winterbottom’s disappearance is upsetting, it’s implied that Phoebe has the power to choose to approach her mother’s disappearance in healthier way. This idea is contrasted with the allusion to Prometheus, a Greek god whom Zeus punished by sentencing him to eternal torture. Paired together, these details perhaps suggest that although suffering can seem never-ending, people can still choose how they respond to it.
Themes
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