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
Maniac spends the day running, but that night, he answers Mrs. Pickwell’s dinner whistle. This time, he’s not a stranger—the Pickwell kids cheer when he arrives, and even better, Mrs. Pickwell treats him like family. There’s a down-and-out shoe salesman at the table, too. Enjoying dinner, Maniac compares the Pickwells to the Beales and finds the two families similar—“whoever had made Hector Street a barrier, it was surely not these people.”
The Pickwells mirror the McNab family—both are loving, open, generous households ready to believe the best of those both within and without. Eating with them restores Maniac’s faith in humanity, and specifically in Two Mills.
Themes
Back at the McNabs’, Maniac finds he no longer has much influence over Piper and Russell, especially with summer approaching. The kids are beginning to build a raft and daydream about escape. It’s unclear to Maniac why he continues to care. He feels that, somehow, abandoning the McNab boys would be “to abandon something in himself.” Deep down, he thinks, the boys are so much like Hester and Lester Beale, but unlike the Beales, their environment is rotting them from the inside.
Maniac sees the McNab boys as being much like himself. If Maniac hadn’t encountered loving homes along the way, he might have turned out like them. He chooses to believe that even the McNabs could be as sweet and affectionate as the Beale kids, if only someone shows them love before it’s too late. This is the epitome of Maniac’s willingness to see the best in others.
Themes
One day, Maniac finds Piper and Russell punting Grayson’s baseball glove back and forth like a football. He explodes at them for 10 minutes. This wins Maniac a few days of respect and obedience. But then, angered by their pretending to attack the “rebels,” Maniac stomps the boys’ toy guns into bits. The boys tell him to leave their house, and Maniac does. A few days later, however, the boys find Maniac at the library and beg him to come to Piper’s birthday party the next day. Maniac agrees—on the condition that he can bring any guest he wants.
Even Maniac has his limits—the kids’ disrespect of Grayson’s glove, of him, and of their neighbors pushes him over the edge. But he still doesn’t give up on them, beginning to hatch a plan of his own.
Themes
