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Chapter 7
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Harbor Me, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Freedom and Justice
Stories and Memory
Unity vs. Division
Race and Identity
Summary
Analysis
A few days later, Haley’s uncle gives her the recorder. Haley goes to her room and begins to record her story. She introduces herself and recounts how the six students had been placed in the A-R-T-T room on Fridays. But this, Haley says, is “a story on top of a story,” because the Lenape American Indians had lived in New York before any of the Dutch had arrived and stolen their land. When she told the class about the Lenape, Ms. Laverne had also said that it was important for them to remember their history. Haley proposes that the world itself is all “stories on top of stories.”
Haley starts to record her stories, but it’s really several stories nested into one, “stories on top of stories”: it’s about herself, but it’s also about the story that Ms. Laverne told the class about the Lenape, and it’s also about the Lenape’s stories literally buried underneath the land of New York. To Haley and to all of the other A-R-T-T kids, history and stories are important—they’re how they relate to one another and to their families, helping them understand where they came from, how they got here, and where they might be headed.
Active
Themes
Haley recalls that after telling the class about the Lenape, Ms. Laverne had posed them a question: if they were living alongside the Lenape, would they help the Lenape keep their land or try to take it for their own? The class had said that they would fight with the Lenape, but Ms. Laverne pushed them further, pointing out that they might not live in America now if the Lenape had won. The class considered this and insisted that they could all learn to share and mix together, so that even if America as they knew it didn’t exist, the people there would look like those in their classroom.
Ms. Laverne asks the class to imagine a situation in which helping someone else might not benefit themselves—in this example, she asks if they would help the Lenape resist colonization, even though it would mean that they wouldn’t live in America now if they succeeded. The class’s answer seems to be a simpler one than Ms. Laverne is expecting: yes. But, they argue, even if they wouldn’t be able to live in present-day Lenapehoking, choosing to harbor the Lenape would still result in a diverse land where different people can live side by side in peace. While their answer might be simplistic, it suggests that the kids are open to Ms. Laverne’s lesson about “harboring” one another.
Active
Themes
Turning the recorder back on, Haley recounts how Ms. Laverne had asked them to envision the worst possible scenario and question whether they would help someone in need, or “be a harbor” to somebody who was struggling. She asked the students to turn to one another and tell each other, “I will harbor you.” No longer recording, Haley looks at a picture on her wall and remembers how her uncle had once taken it down, only to put it back up again when she got upset about the blank square of paint it left behind. Haley wishes that she had more to remember her mother by but resolves to record the stories in the A-R-T-T room to keep forever.
