Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Patron Saints of Nothing, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Truth, Adolescence, and Justice
Responsibility, Guilt, and Blame
Culture and Belonging
Death and Meaning
Summary
Analysis
Jay smells Manila as soon as he steps off the plane: it smells just like it did when he visited and maybe even like it did when Jay was born. The immigration officer at the airport asks Jay if he’s a Filipino coming home, and even though Jay’s dad told him to say yes to get a longer visa, Jay doesn’t know the answer. The man asks if Jay speaks Tagalog, and Jay says no. The man shakes his head but grants the long visa anyway.
Jay’s immediate recognition of Manila’s smell proves his mom wrong: Jay will never be a totally neutral observer of the country’s goings-on, because he recognizes the Philippines as home on some fundamental level. At the same time, his interaction with the immigration officer highlights the ways in which he does not belong in the country. Jay is caught between worlds, unsure of his place in either of them.
Themes
Jay messages Jun’s anonymous friend on Instagram to say that he has arrived in the Philippines. Then Jay waits at the luggage carousel. He notices that everyone in the airport looks like him: black hair, brown skin. Still, Jay’s skin is lighter and he can’t understand the many languages people are speaking. Jay grabs his boxes and waits for Tito Maning, who’s nowhere to be found. Jay suddenly feels helpless, since he doesn’t have his uncle’s phone number and can’t text his parents for it—it’s the middle of the night in the U.S. If Jay can’t even figure this out, how will he solve Jun’s murder?
Again, Jay both is and isn’t part of the crowd at the airport. Meanwhile, Jay came to the Philippines on a mission, but now he’s realizing that his idea of how easy it would be to fulfill his “mission” was simplistic.
Themes
Jay’s Tita Ami, Tito Maning’s wife, eventually arrives without Tito Maning. She greets Jay stiffly, and the family’s driver, Tomas, loads Jay’s boxes and luggage into the car. Jay’s 12-year-old cousin Angel greets him brightly but his 15-year-old cousin Grace is reading a book and simply nods. Grace looks very serious and mature and Angel looks very childlike, but both sisters share Jun’s intelligent eyes.
Jay sees the Philippines through his fixation on Jun, as he notices how much Grace and Angel resemble Jun. The coldness of Tita Ami and Grace, and the absence of Tito Maning, speaks to all sorts of possible family dynamics that Jay can’t yet comprehend. He is a part of this family, but also an outsider to it.
Themes
Tita Ami asks about Jay’s flight and Angel makes small talk, but for the most part conversation in the car dwindles as the family waits in traffic. Jay asks where Tito Maning is, and Tita Ami says that he’s very busy, which Jay takes as a reference to the drug war. Jay doesn’t say anything, not because he’s trying to avoid talking about Jun but because he thinks only Tito Maning would know the truth about Jun’s death. Jay tries to talk to Grace about her book, but she responds with single-syllable answers.
Jay had a vision of showing up in the Philippines and meeting Tito Maning at the airport, and then interrogating Tito Maning until he learned the truth of Jun’s death. The reality of Tito Maning not even showing up shows how Jay’s idea of simply “finding the truth” has no bearing in reality. This also suggests that Jay’s other ideas about Jun’s “case” might be overly simplistic, such as his belief that only Tito Maning, and not the rest of his family, knows what happened to Jun.
Themes
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Jay notices that the models on the billboards they pass have skin as light as his or lighter. They drive by small houses, and Jay thinks that this doesn’t look like a country at war. This makes Jay more confused: why did Jun run away? Jay asks Grace what book she’s reading, and she says it’s by José Rizal. Jay has never read a Filipino author. Angel explains that every Filipino student is required to read Rizal, which makes Jay feel out of place. Jay asks Angel about school, and she says that instructors speak English and that there are too many students in public school. She and Grace go to private school, though. Angel asks questions about Jay’s sister Em, but then the car is silent.
Jay once again is forced to see his disconnection from Filipino society. It turns out that his mom was at least partially correct: he can’t know everything about the Philippines from a distance, and his simplistic idea that the Philippines is just a big “war zone” is clearly not accurate. The light-skinned models on the billboards suggest something else though: that the Philippines is in some ways at odds with its own heritage, as it prizes physical attributes that seem connected to whiteness rather than the attributes of its own people. (One can argue that this likely results from the Philippines’ colonial history—the country was colonized by Spain from 1521-1898, and then by the U.S. until 1946).
Themes
They pass through a crowded neighborhood in which pedestrians weave through cars. Suddenly, a young girl approaches their car, holding out her hands. Tita Ami reassures Jay that their windows are tinted, but thinking of Jun, Jay rolls down his window and hands the girl money (some is from him, but Grace slips him some, too). Jay hopes it’ll help—things are cheap here, so the cash will go a long way.
Jay’s actions are clearly influenced by Jun’s letter in which Jun describes encountering a poor women. Grace slipping Jay some money—in contrast to Tita Ami’s clear desire to have nothing to do with the poor woman—suggests that Grace and Tita Ami’s reasons for their coldness toward Jay are not the same.
Themes
Tita Ami says Jay shouldn’t have helped. Soon, a bunch of kids gather around the car and knock. Tita Ami says that if you help one person, others gather. You can’t give money to everyone who asks, because you’ll end up poor. Jay thinks about his mom’s claim that he can’t understand the Philippines and says nothing. Angel says that according to Tito Maning, the beggars will spend the money on shabu anyway. Everyone flinches, probably thinking of Jun. Tita Ami casually says that the best they can do is give money to the Church, which Jay knows Jun would disagree with; Jun was always critical of the Church. Jay asks Tita Ami to turn the air conditioner down, because he feels cold.
Tita Ami’s reasons for not helping the poor girl are, at once, logical and selfish. It’s true that no single person can solve widespread systemic poverty, but it’s also true that if no one takes responsibility then nothing will change. And Jun’s skepticism about the Church make clear that if you abdicate responsibility to someone else, then you are complicit in what that other person or organization does. Meanwhile, the collective flinch in the car at Angel’s comment indicates that everyone clearly is mourning Jun and also, perhaps, affected by Tito Maning’s clear disdain for the poor. Jay’s comment about the air conditioning has a meaning beyond the literal: it suggests Jay’s sense of Jun’s family’s emotional coldness.
Themes
