Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Al Capone Does My Shirts, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Disability, Dignity, and Shared Humanity
Friendship and Community
Family
Growing Up and Doing the Right Thing
Summary
Analysis
Moose can’t speak. He looks for Natalie by the beach and the greenhouse, and then he hears a voice and runs toward it. He crashes through a thicket and finds Natalie, sitting with a convict. The man is smiling. He’s missing a tooth and his hair is slicked back—inmates don’t have pomade. What’s going on? Moose notices that Natalie looks happy. The convict greets Moose and asks if Moose wants “this,” a baseball he pulls out of his pocket. Moose shouts at him to get away from his sister as the 4:00 whistle blows. The convict and Natalie jump, and the convict puts the ball in Natalie’s hand and says goodbye, calling her “sweetie.” As he hurries away, Moose sees his number on his shirt: 105.
Finally, the narrative reveals what Natalie saying “105” earlier referred to: this convict, whose identification number is 105. The man clearly is familiar with Natalie and knows about Moose, including that Moose has been looking everywhere for a baseball. This is extremely unsettling for Moose, and it makes it feel even more like he and his civilian friends are in prison themselves: the prisoners know as much about the civilians on the island, it seems, as the civilians know about the prisoners.
Themes
