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
One night as Misha makes a typical visit to the lobby of the Jackboot hotel, he’s stunned to see Uri emptying ashtrays. Uri is dressed in a fine uniform, and he pretends not to hear Misha calling him. When Misha chases him down a hallway, Uri takes him into a dark room and squeezes him fiercely. He says that he has a job in the hotel laundry and that Misha must never call him “Uri.” If Misha comes here again, Uri threatens to have him shot.
Uri has not been appearing regularly in the ghetto for a long while, and his parental role in Misha’s life has been eclipsed by Mr. Milgrom’s. His life outside the ghetto remains a mystery—clearly one he doesn’t want Misha to know about. The fact that Uri is working in a Nazi hotel certainly brings his loyalties into question, though Misha is still too naïve to pick up on this.
Themes
Misha doesn’t know what to make of the encounter, but he feels uncomfortable. After his smuggling rounds, he takes his time sneaking back through the hole, knowing that it’s closely patrolled. A short time later, he finds Janina: her sack of food is spilled on the ground, and she’s staring up at a body hanging from a streetlight crossbar. Misha wonders why she’s frozen there—they’ve witnessed so much death in the ghetto before. Then, he looks up and sees that the person hanging is Olek.
Misha senses that there’s more to Uri than he has suspected. But he’s soon distracted by the horrifying fate of one of his orphan friends and fellow smugglers, conspicuously hung as a warning to the other kids. The Nazis didn’t shrink from making examples of children in this way, and it’s a grisly message to Misha and Janina—they know they could easily be next.
Themes
