Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Maniac Magee, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Myth, Reality, and Heroism
Racism
Love, Loss, and Home
Human Dignity, Connection, and Community
Summary
Analysis
That evening, as Maniac wolfs down food at a diner, Grayson abruptly asks if black people eat mashed potatoes, too. Maniac thinks he’s kidding at first, but then says that of course they do. He tells Grayson about his family, the Beales. He also confirms that black people use the same kind of toothbrushes as white people do. He seems shocked when Maniac adds that Maniac even drank out of the same glasses as the Beales did. He’s never been inside a black family’s house.
Grayson’s complete ignorance of the lives of black families—and how similar they really are to white people’s—shows that lack of familiarity is one of the roots of racism in Two Mills. As Maniac himself comes to realize, the less people have personal contact with each other, the more dehumanizing their assumptions will become.
Themes
When Grayson drops Maniac off at the band shell, he offers to let Maniac sleep in his room at the Y instead. Maniac is tempted, but he feels like he always has bad luck with parental figures. To spare Grayson’s feelings, he asks for a bedtime story. Grayson pretends that he doesn’t have any stories. But before he goes out the door, Maniac gets him to admit what he'd dreamed of being as a kid: a baseball player.
On some level, Maniac fears that his repeated loss of family and parental figures is his fault, and he wants to keep his distance. However, in keeping with his instinct for human connection, he still reaches out to Grayson, wanting to understand what makes him who he is.
Themes
