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Chapter 29
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Son of a Trickster, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Dysfunctional Families, Responsibility, and Maturity
Love vs. Violence
Escapism and Confronting Problems
The Environment and Human Destruction
Summary
Analysis
The next day, Jared is avoiding the basement, so he goes to the living room and turns on the Weather Channel. He tries to convince himself that he just had a bad trip, but his inner voice reminds him that he didn’t take any mushrooms. Suddenly, a hand comes through the floor, and the man with the finger bone necklace pulls himself up from the basement. Jared tries to ignore it as he watches a house lift up from its foundation on a TV show about tornadoes.
Even after being transported—and even as his inner voice knows that he didn’t take psychedelic mushrooms—Jared still tries to convince himself that he’s imagining things. Yet trying to ignore the problem only makes it worse, as the ape men follow him into the living room. Jared’s new visions of the ape men are aptly reflected in what Jared is watching. The reference to the flying house alludes to The Wizard of Oz, in which Dorothy was transported to a completely magical world—just as Jared is now experiencing a new, magical dimension as well.
Themes
As more hands scrabble through the floor, Jared’s inner voice tells him that he’s being too loud, and that this is dangerous when Jared doesn’t know what he’s doing. The ape man swipes at Jared, but his hand goes right through him, and more ape men fill the living room. Jared continues to assure himself that they’re not real—he and Sarah kissed after she had mushrooms, which altered his brain. Suddenly, something bangs the living room window, and Jared approaches it in time to see something small skitter into the bushes. The ape men go silent and return to the basement, and Jared worries about what could scare them.
The more Jared tries to deny that what is going on around him is real, the “louder” he gets. Throughout the novel, many people have referenced the fact that Jared is very noisy, and his ignorance of magic and lack of control seems to make this worse. The escalating danger from Jared’s lack of control is clear here, as he attracts other beings that scare even the large ape men. This suggests that avoiding problems—like one’s magical powers—can only add to those problems, increase chaos, and deprive a person of control.
Themes
Later, when Jared is asleep, a voice whispers that Jared’s mom is hurt, and Jared snaps his eyes open. It’s dark in the basement, and Jared can still see the ape men huddled in the corner. Jared, remaining very still, wishes that all of these weird things would stop happening. Suddenly, Jared hears a dog bark—Baby Killer’s bark. He hears her pawing at the door, but he knows that it can’t be Baby, because he buried her himself. He wants so badly to go to her, but he knows it’s not Baby. He texts his mom asking if she’s okay.
Jared is upset in this moment because of what Baby’s relationship meant to him. He valued her and still misses her deeply because she represented the kind of warm, unconditional love that Jared rarely gets from other people.
Themes
When the sun rises, Baby stops barking. Jared opens the door and sees Baby’s paw prints alongside smaller claw prints there. He goes upstairs to his mom’s room, and the ape men follow Jared silently, still scared from the night before. Jared asks if she heard a dog last night, but she says no. Then, Jared’s mom notices that he’s tucked the gun his mom gave him into his belt, and she gives him a holster to make it less obvious. She tells him not to hesitate when he draws his gun.
By strapping the gun to himself, Jared seems to acknowledge how out of control and dangerous the magic occurrences in his life have become. As a result, he’s finally willing to use violence to defend himself from this unknown danger. This again reinforces how avoiding problems has resulted in Jared having to take extreme actions to protect himself, suggesting that instead of denying what was happening, he should have dealt with it directly to avoid getting to this point.
Themes
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