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 is awakened by someone wrenching his ear. It’s Amanda, angrily flinging straw at him. She yells at Maniac that he has a lot to be sorry for. He rejected Snickers’s invitation to his house (she’s renamed Mars Bar so he doesn’t sound so “bad”), and Snickers woke her up and made her sneak out of her house. Maniac laughs for the first time in a long time.
A short time later, Amanda—probably the only person who can talk sense into Maniac—interrupts his self-pity by reminding him how much he’s loved.
Themes
When Maniac refuses to come to Amanda’s house, either, she rants at him—she’s not asking him, she’s telling him. Maniac is going to sleep at her house tonight and all the nights after that, she says firmly—the zoo is not his home.
Amanda’s rant shows Maniac that maybe it’s not entirely up to him where his home is. Even if he tries to hold himself back from the risks of love, in other words, real love demands that he give in.
Themes
Maniac finally gets up and follows Amanda, boosting her out of the buffalo pen and walking along with her and Snickers/Mars Bar. Amanda continues to rant about how much trouble Maniac causes, and he just lets her talk. He knows that “at long last, someone [is] calling him home.”
Maniac finally relents, hearing in Amanda’s rant the love of a sister and the promise of a home where he really belongs. The simplicity of the story’s ending confirms Maniac’s instinct that friendship finally overcomes division, even if it only happens one friend, one home, and one community at a time.
Themes
