Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Code Talker, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory, Language, and Identity
The Navajo Way and the Life of the Warrior
Culture and Patriotism
War, Healing, and Peace
Summary
Analysis
A worried six-year old Ned hears his mother calling his name. Dragging his feet, he emerges from behind the family’s hogan to see his beautiful mother dressed in her finest clothes and jewelry. She is also carrying a bundle of his clothes. She gestures Ned inside, where he says goodbye to his great-grandfather, who is frail and shrunken. Great-grandfather embraces Ned and tells him to be strong, calling him Kii Yázhí, “Little Boy.”
Ned senses that a big change is about to take place in his life—one he isn’t sure he wants. His mother’s fine dress and his great-grandfather’s words confirm this. A hogan is a traditional Navajo home, built from earth and logs. At this point in the story, Ned is only known by his Navajo name, Kii Yázhí.
Themes
Outside, Ned’s parents embrace him sadly. His father lifts him into the seat of Ned’s uncle’s waiting wagon. His uncle drives off, and Ned waves until the wagon goes behind a hill and he can no longer see his family. Ned’s uncle, his mother’s brother, is the only member of their family who has attended the white man’s school. He convinced Ned’s mother to send Ned to the mission school, too, in Gallup.
Ned has a close bond with his family, but his uncle thinks it is important for Ned to attend a faraway, culturally unfamiliar school. Ned later describes his home as being located near Grants, New Mexico, which is more than 60 miles from Gallup. It was common for Native American children to attend boarding schools staffed by white teachers in the first half of the 20th century.
Themes
Ned’s uncle, sensing that Ned is looking for courage, tells him to look ahead, not backward. He tells Ned that Ned is not going to school for himself. He is doing it for his family. It’s a good thing for Ned to learn the ways of the white people, or bilagáanaa, because the laws the Navajo must live by are in English. Ned tries to understand. Earlier generations had not gone away to school—they had learned everything from their families and from tribal elders.
From the time he’s a little boy, Ned is taught to sacrifice for the sake of others, especially for his family and the Navajo people at large. This lesson takes root deeply in Ned, as later events will show. Formal schooling is necessary because of events beyond the Navajo reservation—to a certain extent, the shape of Ned’s life is governed by the majority culture.
Themes
After a thoughtful silence, Ned’s uncle talks about the family’s history. He explains that when Great-grandfather was Ned’s age, the Americans, led by “Red Shirt,” or Kit Carson, waged their last war against the Navajos. This war happened, he says, because the Americans did not know the Navajos, and they did not understand about the Mexicans. Ned knows that, for a long time, Mexicans had raided Navajo camps and enslaved their people. In turn, Navajos raided Mexican villages to rescue their people. Because the Mexicans could communicate with the Americans better than the Navajo could, the Americans believed the Mexican account of the Navajos’ actions, and they made war on those Navajo bands that refused to stop raiding the Mexican villages. Then they drove the Navajo people into exile, on what is called the Long Walk.
The Navajo Long Walk took place in 1864. The memory of this forced march and exile would not have been distant history, but tangibly present, since the most affected generations were still alive. Ned would have grown up hearing these stories and feeling they were part of him. From a young age, he knows that the American government has a history of repressing his people and that his culture is not always valued by the broader world.
Themes
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Ned has heard a lot about the Long Walk from his great-grandfather. The people were forced to journey hundreds of miles to a place called Fort Sumner. Hundreds died along the way and after they arrived. Their corn crops couldn’t thrive there, and they were attacked by other tribes. They called Fort Sumner “the place where only the wind could live.” Ned “knew this history as well as [his] own name.”
Fort Sumner is located in the eastern part of New Mexico. In the 1860s, it was a military fort where Navajo and Apache groups were imprisoned after the war with Kit Carson.
Themes
Ned’s uncle says that although it was hard for their people to be so far away from home, they persevered, remembering their homeland, praying, and doing a special ceremony. At that point, the white men permitted the Navajos to return home. But the Navajo people would have to learn the white men’s ways and abide by their laws. That’s why some Navajo children now attend white schools—so that they can “speak to them, tell them who we really are, reassure them that we will always be friends of the United States.” That is why Ned himself must go to the mission school—for the sake of his family, his people, and his land. Ned promises his uncle that he will do his best.
Ned’s uncle tells their people’s history in such a way that young Ned can see his place in it. Like his great-grandfather’s generation, he must persevere while far from home, praying and remembering his people. Ned’s uncle hopes that by sending Ned to the white school, Ned and his generation will be able to influence white people to look more favorably upon the Navajos. While this sounds farfetched at the time, circumstances will give Ned that very opportunity later in life.
Themes
