Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Elatsoe, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family and Friendship
Justice
Cultural Identity and Coming of Age
Colonialism and Monsters
Death, Grief, and Healing
Storytelling
Summary
Analysis
Ellie doesn’t want to hear how Six-Great died, especially when Vivian says that she’ll only share the story once and that Ellie can only tell it once. Insisting that stories can share knowledge and aren’t just entertainment, Vivian proceeds anyway. Six-Great, she says, died when she visited the underworld and didn’t return. The story begins during foaling season, when Six-Great’s husband slept outside to monitor his favorite horse who was pregnant with her first. One night, someone shot him while he was sleeping—and, Vivian says meaningfully, “[o]nly one kind of monster uses guns.” The shooter also stole horses, though not the pregnant mare. Nobody is sure why they targeted Six-Great’s husband, but it’s possible they were warning the Apache or were afraid of Six-Great.
Vivian makes it extremely clear to Ellie that the story of Six-Great’s death isn’t entertaining; that’s not the purpose by any means. Rather, this is going to give Ellie important context, both for her own trips to the underworld and about the underworld and how to manage her relationship with it more broadly. Noting that “[o]nly one kind of monster uses guns,” Vivian highlights that Six-Great’s biggest foe was actually white settlers, not indigenous monsters like the Kunétai creature. Guns have the power to kill in an instant, a power that the novel has suggested thus far is unique to them.
Themes
On the third day after Six-Great’s husband’s death, Six-Great insisted to her daughter that she needed to seek revenge. The daughter was afraid for her mother’s health, but Six-Great insisted on going with her dogs. She returned months later with all the stolen horses—but, Vivian says, this isn’t a story with a tidy plot, and Six-Great never recovered. When her daughter eventually confronted her and told her to stop dwelling on her dead husband, Six-Great admitted that he’d been telling her to do more to avenge him. Though she agreed that it was a terrible ghost speaking to her, she said that something had started to use her as a path between the living world and the underworld.
Six-Great’s story offers several implications about what will (and won’t) happen in regard to Trevor’s death. First, the fact that her husband’s spirit is speaking to her mirrors how Trevor continues to visit Ellie in her dreams, begging for help. Given how this story is going, Trevor’s visits seem even more dangerous. Then, it also suggests that even if Ellie does solve Trevor’s murder and get justice for him, this doesn’t mean it’s going to fix everything. It’s unclear what justice would actually look like—and if Trevor’s spirit is going to accept whatever Ellie can come up with.
Themes
Vivian continues her story. Six-Great announced that she was going to the underworld to tell her husband’s soul that the horses are safe and that he’s been avenged, and perhaps she could bring him back. Though Six-Great’s daughter argued with her, Six-Great insisted on going. She left for the underworld at sunset and vanished. Ellie remarks that maybe Six-Great didn’t die, but Vivian insists that the underworld “defeated” her. So, Vivian explains, Ellie can’t go to the underworld again. Ellie promises Vivian she won’t.
Vivian takes a pretty simple moral from Six-Great’s story: going to the underworld is bad and dangerous. Ellie, in her youth and her hopefulness, looks for a happier lesson here, but Vivian shuts her down. This, of course, ignores that Ellie has already been to the underworld and back once without incident—suggesting that already, she’s different from Six-Great.
Themes
