Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Milkweed, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Relationships
War, Dehumanization, and Innocence
Ingenuity, Resilience, and Survival
Family
Summary
Analysis
Misha keeps delivering coal to the orphans. He also brings Janina coal and bread whenever he can. One day, when he knocks on Janina’s back door, a German soldier answers. Misha doesn’t understand what the soldier is saying, but when Misha tells the soldier that he’s a “Gypsy,” the man slaps him and dumps beer on his head. Misha brings the heavy sack of coal down onto the soldier’s stockinged foot and runs.
Janina’s family has been displaced by the German occupation. Even when Misha is treated in a degrading fashion because of his self-identification as Roma (again showing how much this fictionalized past means to him), he quickly adapts to the situation by getting back at the soldier.
Themes
Misha and Uri sleep in the stable with the other orphan boys. When they walk through the city, Uri strictly instructs Misha not to do anything to draw attention to himself and to ensure that he doesn’t look guilty. Once, concentrating hard on not looking guilty, Misha wanders right into the street and gets bumped by a car. He isn’t hurt, but Uri is furious. He drags Misha into an alley and punches him, telling him, “Someday I’m going to have to kill you to keep you alive.” Misha is sure he’ll never disobey Uri again.
Uri’s protectiveness of Misha takes a disturbing turn sometimes, as illustrated here, when Uri responds to Misha’s mistake with fury and punishment. Misha also desperately wants to please Uri, showing how much Uri’s care has meant to him (and also how vulnerable this desperation to please makes him). Uri’s remark, “Someday I’m going to have to kill you,” foreshadows the possibility that this troubling dynamic will grow even more violent.
Themes
