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Chapter 2
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
During that first visit to Margaret Cadaver’s, Sal sees Phoebe’s face in a window next door. She also meets Mrs. Partridge, Margaret’s very old mother. Margaret is very nice to Sal, but Sal isn’t nice in return—in fact, she’s very rude. When the visit comes to an end, Margaret whispers to Dad and asks if he’s told Sal yet how she and Dad met. Dad whispered back that he’s tried, but Sal doesn’t want to know. This is true: Sal doesn’t care at all.
There’s clearly more going on between Dad and Margaret than Sal is willing to acknowledge. It’s unclear whether Margaret and Dad are close because they’re romantically interested in each other or because of a different reason. Regardless, at this point, Sal is flat-out refusing to learn anything about Margaret because of how much she dislikes her and how much she resents Dad—and it’s implied that this is because Sal thinks Dad is trying to replace Momma with Margaret.
Themes
Dad drives Sal two blocks away to their new house. Like Margaret’s house, it sits in a line of other tiny houses. There’s no swimming hole, barn, pigs, or chickens. There isn’t enough grass in the yard to keep a cow alive for even a few minutes. Dad leads Sal on a tour of the tiny house, and soon, the moving van arrives. Once the movers unload everything into the tiny living room, Dad remarks that it’s like they’ve tried to fit all their things in a chicken coop.
As a first-person narrator, Sal shares her personal thoughts with the reader. Noting that there’s not enough grass to keep a cow alive shows that Sal thinks of most things in terms of the natural world; this is the only way she knows to quantify how much grass is in their yard. Dad seems to share Sal’s way of looking at the world when he likens their small home to a chicken coop, and this sarcastic comment could hint that Dad feels similarly conflicted about leaving the farm behind.
Themes
Sal starts school three days later. Phoebe is in her class, but she’s quiet and keeps to herself. The other kids all touch Sal’s long black hair, and one girl, Mary Lou Finney, keeps saying odd things like “Beef brain!” or “Omnipotent.” A boy named Ben draws cartoons all day, and Sal’s English teacher, Mr. Birkway, is “peculiar.”
Sal is a curiosity to her new classmates, especially because of her hair—but in the same vein, Sal seems to find her classmates and teacher just as “peculiar.” This suggests that judging people is common (perhaps even natural), and that what makes someone strange is a matter of subjective opinion.
Themes
That week, Dad and Sal eat dinner three times at Margaret’s house. Sal sees Phoebe’s face in the window again, but Phoebe doesn’t wave back when Sal waves at her. Finally, at lunch one day, Phoebe sits next to Sal and compliments her for being brave. Sal insists she’s not brave. Privately, she’s afraid of lots of things, like car accidents, nuclear war, pregnant women, and cancer. But she isn’t afraid of spiders, and she revealed this to her classmates earlier by putting one outside. Everyone was impressed.
Again, just as Sal thinks her classmates are odd, Phoebe’s standoffishness suggests that she finds Sal strange or even intimidating. But Sal earns Phoebe’s respect by seeming brave. But Sal doesn’t see putting the spider outside as an act of bravery, because she’s so comfortable with nature—spiders aren’t frightening for her. Sal’s fear of pregnant women stands out from the rest of the list, as it’s a less common fear that violence or illness, for instance. Therefore, it seems likely that this fear is rooted in a personal experience she had with a pregnant woman.
Themes
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Back in the car, Gram interrupts Sal to say that Sal is brave because she’s a Hiddle. All Hiddles are brave, like Dad and Momma. When Sal points out that Momma isn’t really a Hiddle, Gram says she is—she’s been married to a Hiddle long enough. Sal remembers that Momma never felt that way. She’d always say, in a sorry tone, that she’d never be a real Hiddle.
Here, Sal starts to hint at the possibility that Momma wasn’t as happy in the Hiddle family as people might have expected her to be. Sal must have been particularly close with Momma, since she seems to be the only one aware of Momma’s unhappiness.
Themes
Momma’s parents are Pickfords, and they’re very different from the Hiddles. They stand up straight and starch their clothes. Once, Momma explained that her parents never laugh because they’re “just so busy being respectable.” Momma also said that the only defiant thing Grandmother Pickford did was to name Momma Chanhassen. It’s an Indian name that means “sweet tree juice,” or maple sugar. Everyone called Momma Sugar. Sal has always had a hard time believing that Momma came from her parents, since she was so different from them. She only occasionally sounded like a Pickford.
Though Momma doesn’t describe her parents in a way that suggests she admires them, her story about Grandmother Pickford choosing an “Indian name” for Momma nevertheless shows that even the most uptight people can have unexpected quirks. Momma’s name, Chanhassen, is something else that connects her to Salamanca, who was named after what her parents thought was a Native American ancestor’s tribe. In addition, both mother and daughter are named after trees (Momma’s first name means maple sugar, and Sal’s middle name is Tree), which further connects them with each other and with nature.
Themes
