Identity and Relationships Theme Analysis

In Milkweed, which takes place in the Warsaw, Poland ghetto in World War II, a young orphan boy knows no other name than “Stopthief,” and he doesn’t remember where he comes from. As the novel develops, Stopthief’s identity develops as he meets and develops relationships with other characters—his friend Uri gives him the name Misha along with a fictional past, and he’s later unofficially adopted into a Jewish family, the Milgroms. By showing how Misha increasingly flourishes through personal relationships, even when his identification isn’t strictly accurate, Spinelli suggests that a sense of personal identity is vital to one’s wellbeing because, regardless of its accuracy, such identity helps forge meaningful connections between people.

At first, Stopthief doesn’t have a sense of personal identity beyond simplistic and imaginary characteristics that others use to define him. At the beginning of the novel, Stopthief meets his first real friend, Uri, while they’re both stealing bread on the streets of Warsaw just before the German invasion. Puzzled by the younger boy’s innocence of the world around him, Uri asks who he is. “I didn't understand the question. ‘I'm Uri,’ he said. ‘What's your name?’ I gave him my name. ‘Stopthief.’” Stopthief has spent his life stealing food to survive. Because no one has known him for who he is, he’s never been called anything besides “Thief”—a bare reflection of his actions that fails to capture a deeper sense of his identity. Eventually, Uri makes up a story so that his nameless young friend will have an identity and a history—even an imaginary one. “Uri said to me, ‘Okay, this is who you are. Your name is Misha Pilsudski.’ And he told me the rest…I, Misha Pilsudski, was born a Gypsy somewhere in the land of Russia. My family, including two great-grandfathers and a great-great-grandmother who was one hundred and nine years old, traveled from place to place in seven wagons pulled by fourteen horses.” Later, Uri explains, the family’s caravan was scattered by Nazi bombs, and Misha gradually found his way to the streets of Warsaw. With this story, Misha’s whole identity is something invented and bestowed upon him by somebody else.

Even this invented identity gives Misha a basis for richer relationships with others. After Uri gives Misha his new name and imagined history, Misha feels like a new person—or perhaps like a real person for the first time. “And so, thanks to Uri […] I was born, you might say […] For days afterward, I did little else but stare into the barbershop mirror, fascinated by the face that stared back. […] And then it was no longer enough […] I needed to tell someone else.” In other words, having an identity—even one that isn’t literally accurate—makes Misha feel a real person, not just a reflection of what he’s forced to do in his daily life (thieving and running). What’s more, having that identity gives Misha the desire to connect with other people—something that has been a more incidental aspect of his identity in the past. Instead of coincidentally falling in with fellow thieves, he now desires connection that’s based on sharing who he truly is.

Misha’s sense of identity deepens as he suffers and celebrates with the Milgroms, a Jewish family he befriends in the Warsaw ghetto. Sometimes, Nazi soldiers force residents out of their homes and make them stand at attention all night, attacking and killing those who can’t endure this punishment. The first time this happens, Mr. Milgrom slips Misha an extra armband (a marker of Jewishness) so that his lack of one doesn’t raise any questions, and Misha survives the brutal night alongside the Milgroms and the rest of the ghetto community. “With my new armband, I thought: I am a Jew now. A filthy son of Abraham. They're screaming at me. I am somebody. I tried to listen well, to hear what they were screaming, but I could not understand much beyond ‘dirty’ and ‘filthy’ and ‘Jew.’” It doesn’t matter to Misha that he probably isn’t ethnically Jewish, that he’s not related to the Milgroms, or even that the Nazis are screaming abuse at him. For Misha, this is the first experience he’s ever had of being included in a community and of belonging with anyone else, even to the point of sharing in the sufferings they endure. Even though the Milgrom family barely has any food to eat or candles to burn, Mr. Milgrom insists that the family observe Hanukkah. Mr. Milgrom explains the meaning behind the festival traditions: "[…] we remember to be happy and proud to be Jews and that we will always survive. This is our time. We celebrate ourselves. We must be happy now. We must never forget how to be happy.” Essentially, Mr. Milgrom finds strength by remembering that past generations who were persecuted did not allow their oppressors to steal their identity. When Misha is invited into this community, even though he’s a stranger to it, an entire people’s collective identity—including their present and past sufferings and joys—become his as well.

The novel ends decades later, when Misha is an old man living with his daughter in the United States. As he holds his granddaughter, he reflects, “I think of all the voices that have told me who I have been, the names I've had. […] Empty-handed victims once told me who I was. Then Uri told me. Then an armband. Then an immigration officer. And now this little girl in my lap, this little girl whose call silences the tramping Jackboots. Her voice will be the last. […] I am…Poppynoodle.” In a sense, Misha never fully escapes being identified by others. Importantly, though, he’s grown happier as his identity has been grounded less on others’ ideas about his behavior, outward characteristics, or ethnicity (real or supposed) and more on his own relationships with those he loves.