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
Normally, Grayson is the first one up. But on December 30th, Maniac is startled awake by silence. When he shakes Grayson, he realizes the truth. He sits by Grayson all day, holding his limp hand and talking to him. He even reads aloud Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shovel, Grayson’s favorite. Only that night does he finally cry.
Grayson has apparently died in his sleep of old age. Maniac has again lost someone he loves, and he grieves in the best way he knows how.
Themes
Grayson’s funeral takes place on January 3rd. The pallbearers are from Two Mills’s trash collecting team. Nobody else shows up—just Maniac and the funeral director. The minister gets held up in traffic. The pallbearers get restless in the cold. Finally, Maniac can no longer bear watching and waiting. He takes off running.
The makeshift (and undignified) character of Grayson’s funeral shows how little he was regarded by the wider world—and how much Maniac’s love therefore meant to him. Maniac’s instinct in the face of loss and grief is, once again, to run.
Themes
