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
Nine hours into the drive, Ellie sees a sign for a rock shop and truck stop, and she asks Dad if they can stop. He agrees and hopes there’s coffee. Although he’s tired, he refuses to let Ellie drive. Dad parks right in front, gives Ellie money to buy a fossil and coffee, and stays put to take a nap. Inside, Ellie asks the white cashier if the museum has megalodon teeth or T. rex footprints, handing over her five-dollar entrance fee. But before Ellie can enter the museum, the woman clears her throat and points to a screen displaying museum security footage. Annoyed, Ellie thinks of Dad’s advice to ignore the rudeness and vows to enjoy the museum. Still, it’s exhausting how many people assume Ellie is trouble.
The implication here is that because Ellie is visibly Native American, the cashier assumes she is a criminal and will steal from the museum’s exhibits. This is, of course, bigoted and unfair—and readers know that Ellie always planned to purchase a fossil since Dad gave her money for that express purpose. Ellie frames living with this kind of constant bigotry as weighty, as a constant damper on an otherwise happy life.
Themes
Ellie calls Kirby and studies a display case, unsure of what she should do with her hands to make it clear she’s not trying to steal. Jay calls just then, and they discuss Ronnie’s insistence that it’s useless to practice magic—she worries about its environmental impact. He insists that fairy rings, or fungi-powered magical portals operated by fairy folk, is way worse for the environment. Ellie can’t use them as a “stranger,” which irks her—this is her country. Finally, Jay says he’s just calling to check on Ellie. When she mentions finding a fossil to practice waking up something prehistoric, she explains that it is possible: her grandmother spent 40 years making a woolly mammoth her best friend.
Within the world of the novel, fairy magic has a negative environmental impact. While this suggests that settlers’ magics are inherently bad for the environment (there’s no mention, in contrast, that Ellie raising the dead harms the environment), Jay and Ellie both suggest that it’s important to take a nuanced view of this: traveling by fairy ring is convenient, and a will-o’-the-wisp is barely a drop in the bucket compared to a fairy ring in terms of environmental impact. That Ellie can’t use fairy rings that are on ancestral Lipan Apache land highlights how colonialism has systematically denied Native Americans rights and services, even when those services occur on their own land.
Themes
Jay then asks what he can do to help. Ellie asks him to see if he can find any information on Abe Allerton and to give her a call if he learns anything before nine tonight, when she and Dad will drive through Willowbee. Hanging up, Ellie moves to the fossil collection and begins reaching for the animals’ souls, but she realizes she’ll need to hold a fossil to wake one of the creatures. She chooses a trilobite fossil from the gift shop and checks out with a teenage cashier, possibly the older woman’s daughter. Ellie asks for a receipt, but since the store doesn’t issue receipts, the girl scribbles one on a sticky note. In the convenience store, Ellie gets a cup of coffee for Dad—and when the woman asks if Ellie paid for the trilobite, she hands over the coffee money and her sticky note receipt.
Jay continues to support Ellie, both by checking in on her so that she feels less alone in this hostile environment and by agreeing to tackle this research into Abe Allerton. The teenage cashier is perhaps less bigoted than the middle-aged woman, hopefully suggesting that younger generations are less prejudiced than their parents. Still, Ellie knows she must protect herself, which is why she asks for the receipt in the first place.
Themes
