Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Messenger, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Selfishness vs. the Collective Good
Youth, Memory, and the Future
Humans and Nature
Identity and Difference
Summary
Analysis
A few mornings later, Matty and Kira wake up. Matty is surprised they're still alive. Kira can barely see, and Matty discovers that his nose is bleeding. Kira says that she can't walk and Matty looks at her legs, which are cut deeply enough in places to expose muscles and tendons. Frolic lies motionless against Matty as Kira tells Matty to go on while she sleeps. Matty pushes through the pain to pull out Kira's embroidery frame, thread a needle, and shake her awake. He asks her to try to figure out where Leader is by meeting him with her gift. She obliges and finally, her hands shimmer.
When Matty asks Kira to use her gift, it recalls Leader's insistence that he's going to fight Forest with his gift. If both of them are able to work together and “meet” each other, they might be able to make a plan to get out of Forest alive. The fact that Matty is the one to instigate this suggests that even though he's a child, he's wise and has taken Leader's advice to heart thus far.
Themes
Two days into Forest, Leader feels the attacks. He realizes that they probably started earlier, but he brushed them off as clumsiness. He reaches a place where the path seems to end. A frog hops out, croaking, and hops away. Leader follows it and is surprised when he comes across the path again. Suddenly, stinging insects swarm around Leader and fly away. He runs, but rocks throw themselves at his knees. Leader wishes he'd brought a weapon, but thinks that Forest is too big to fight with a knife or a club. He thinks of telling Seer that his gift is his weapon. Now, he's not even sure what he meant by that. As a vine grows around his ankle, he tries to look beyond.
The frog is presumably the same one that Matty healed, which gives it a good reason to help Leader, consciously or otherwise. This suggests that there are still parts of Forest that are healthy and able to function in a way that helps the common good—even if the frog isn't doing this on purpose, it's still something that Matty healed and seems relatively unaffected by the destruction taking place throughout Forest. This again suggests that Matty is the one capable of fixing everything.
Themes
