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Book 2, Chapter 14
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Son, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Pain and Maternal Love
Travel, Fitting In, and Values
Emotion, Individuality, and the Human Experience
Family and Coming of Age
Community and Sacrifice
Summary
Analysis
With relief, Claire emerges from the tunnel and sees the big nest Einar told her about. There’s an important handhold underneath that she can use to continue her climb. But as she reaches out, one of the parent gulls swoops down and stabs her in the neck with its beak. Einar, she realizes, climbed in the winter. But it’s spring now, and there are chicks to protect in the nest. Claire uses seaweed to stanch the bleeding, has a drink, and throws her now-empty gourd away. This allows her to reach Alys’s healing salve. Claire tries again, but once again the bird dives at her and slices open her arm, sending Claire back into the tunnel’s safety. She can see her bone through the blood.
This passage presents Claire with an uncomfortable conundrum, but one that she doesn’t seem fully aware of. Claire has to get past a parent and its babies—essentially, she’s trying to get past an avian version of herself. The bird’s ferocity as it attacks Claire and defends its nest highlights the power and the intensity of a parent’s love for their children.
Themes
After dressing the wound with the last of the salve, Claire bandages her arm with a strip cut from her pack. Then, she lassos the nest, pulling it and the chicks off the cliff so she can continue her climb.
Claire prioritizes her own little family over the bird’s when she sends the nest tumbling.
Themes
