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Part 2, Chapter 23
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Echo, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Connections and Fate
Bigotry vs. Shared Humanity
The Power of Music
Parents, Mentors, and Growing Up
Summary
Analysis
Late that night, Mike dresses and packs everything he and Frankie need in a suitcase. He gets Frankie up and tells them they have to go—he explains the papers he found, which would reverse their adoptions. Frankie cries and doesn’t want to go. Mike promises that he wrote Eunice a nice note and maybe someday they can come back to visit Mr. Potter and Mrs. Potter. Mike says he and Frankie will take a train to New York City.
Although Mike acts rashly by running way, he is motivated by the good intention of keeping himself and Frankie together. Mike still hasn’t been able to leave behind his old orphanage way of thinking, where running away was always a last-ditch solution to his problems.
Active
Themes
Mike goes first out the window of their room, starting to climb down a tree. Suddenly, he misses a spot with his leg, looks down, and gets dizzy. His harmonica slides away to a fork in a branch. Mike reaches for it and suddenly loses his balance and falls. The wind blows a chord through the harmonica, which he just barely managed to grab. When Mike hits the ground, he can’t move. He looks up at Frankie above him, and all of a sudden, Frankie’s voice fades and instead Mike hears “Brahms’ Lullaby,” until that fades, too.
