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
The next morning, Jay wakes up early and leaves the house. Grace follows him and asks where he’s going. Jay tells her that he’s going to Legazpi; she lets him know that is actually in the opposite direction. She asks if he’s going to talk to Tito Danilo, and Jay admits that he is. He wants to go alone, but Grace says that Jun was her brother, so together they find a taxi driver. Jay knows that they’ll get in trouble for this trip, but no one would have let them go. Last night, Jay tried to ask the family what Tito Maning meant when he brought up Tito Danilo, but they all told Jay to drop it.
That Grace and Jay are going to find Tito Danilo suggests that even though they dismissed Tito Maning’s claims as lies the previous night, they worry that there might be some truth to them. Jay and Grace have now started to build a relationship built on sharing and honesty, but the family shutting down the conversation shows that secrets remain and the rest of the family fears the impact of having those secrets exposed. Jay initially going the wrong direction is a bit of comedy that again shows his lack of knowledge of the Philippines.
Themes
As the taxi maneuvers through the city, the streets begin to get crowded with people on their way to work, and it starts to rain lightly. Jay can feel his phone buzzing now that he has a signal again, but he ignores it. Eventually, Grace and Jay arrive at a huge cathedral. Jay overpays the taxi driver, according to Grace; he gave roughly 60 U.S. dollars. Jay muses that his University of Michigan hoodie probably cost the same amount. The inside of the church is new-looking, with fresh paint and polished pews. Jay says it's beautiful, and Grace says the poor paid for it, which reminds Jay of Jun. Grace checks the rectory while Jay checks his texts. They’re mostly from Mia. He’s still annoyed at her for not responding earlier.
This trip to Legazpi is somewhat similar to Jay’s trip to the slums with Mia. People were on their way to work when Jay arrived at the slums, but this time, Jay doesn’t even notice his surroundings and doesn’t even bother to check his phone. He was on a similarly single-minded mission in the slums, but back then, he thought that learning the truth about Jun would be a good and meaningful thing, which is why he told Brian Santos that he was willing to die for the truth. Now, he knows that learning the truth might reveal things that he wished he didn’t know. Ignoring Mia might be taken as an indication of his partial loss of faith in the idea that all secrets should be exposed. Meanwhile, Jay continues to make tourist-like mistakes such as overpaying the taxi, while Grace’s comment about the poor paying for the church indicates that she shares a lot of Jun’s political beliefs, including his skepticism about the Church.
Themes
While Grace is still looking around, Tito Danilo appears suddenly. Jay tells him that he’s here to talk about Jun. When Grace returns, the three of them sit in the pews. Jay says that according to Tito Maning, the police killed Jun for selling drugs, but Jay knows that Jun was killed for his Instagram. They fill Tito Danilo in on everything, beginning with Grace’s anonymous Instagram messages to Jay and ending with their journey today (leaving Reyna out). Much of this seems like new information to Tito Danilo. Looking sad, Tito Danilo says that what happened was a tragedy and there’s nothing else to say. Jay says that there’s still the truth, and Grace says that Tito Danilo needs to come home and tell everyone that Tito Maning is lying.
Jay poses his questions to Danilo as if he is only there to get confirmation that Tito Maning is lying. But the fact Jay has to check with Danilo at all means he isn’t quite so certain about what the truth is. Danilo’s comment that what happened is a tragedy is a sort of “truth” in that it acknowledges the awful waste and sadness that came from Jun’s death. By using such a vague term and avoiding the specifics of what happened, Danilo attempts to avoid assigning both responsibility and blame. Jay refuses such a stance, insisting on the value of the actual factual truth of what happened.
Themes
Tito Danilo is quiet, and Jay worries that his uncle won’t be brave enough to stand up to Tito Maning. Finally, Tito Danilo says that what’s happening in the Philippines is a shame, and it’s a shame that the Church hasn’t spoken up. He tells Grace and Jay that Tito Maning called him a few months before Jun died; apparently, he’d heard from his colleagues that Jun was in Legazpi. Tito Maning wanted Tito Danilo to find and save Jun. Tito Maning had already bribed his colleagues to remove Jun’s name from the list, but Jun was back on it, and Tito Maning now wanted Tito Danilo to save Jun from drugs. Grace and Jay are confused: they’re sure that Jun didn’t use or sell drugs.
Jay still hopes that the truth about Jun is simple and that the only obstacle to telling that truth will be Tito Danilo’s bravery or lack thereof. But, apparently, the truth is much more complicated than Jay and Grace thought. The scrawled note in Tagalog now makes sense: Tito Maning wanted someone to track Jun down to protect him, which is the opposite of what Jay initially assumed. Tito Danilo’s comment about the failure of the Church in addressing the drug war also broadens the idea of responsibility and guilt to include the ways that one’s connection to a larger institution can make one complicit in that institution’s actions, and Danilo acknowledges his guilt relative to the Church’s silence regarding the drug war.
Themes
Get the entire Patron Saints of Nothing LitChart as a printable PDF.
Tito Danilo continues. He spent weeks looking for Jun and couldn’t find him. One day, Jun came to the church looking different: he was skinny and rocked back and forth. Jun wanted to talk to Tito Danilo, and Tito Danilo told him to either go back home or stay here with him. But Jun was angry, saying that no one ever listened; people only told others what to do. Tito Danilo tells a disbelieving Grace and Jay that Jun used and sold drugs; Jun said so himself. Jun may have gotten onto the watchlist because of the Instagram account, but he ran away from Reyna because he’d started using and didn’t want to ruin her.
Tito Danilo makes clear that Jun sold drugs. The truth Jay was searching for—that Jun was an uncomplicatedly good person—has now been made murkier. Jun’s angry comment that no one every listened seems like a condemnation of Jay (who failed to write back), Tito Maning (who only ever ordered Jun around), and everyone else in the world who focused on themselves rather than others. Jun’s despair also offers an explanation for why he might have turned to drugs. Meanwhile, that he left Reyna before he could spend their money on drugs suggests that he was still trying to protect others, even as he had ceased to protect himself.
Themes
Jay says nothing. He thought he knew Jun’s story, but now he sees that stories can shift. Tito Danilo continues, saying that Jun later began selling drugs. Shabu suppresses hunger, he explains, so many poor people begin using for this reason. Maybe Jun began selling to feed his addiction. Tito Danilo tells Jay and Grace that he’s sorry to tell them this, but he has nothing to gain from lying. At the time, Tito Danilo told Jun that he could stay at the church with him. Jun refused but promised to come back. He was dead days later. Jay refuses to believe Tito Danilo at first, but he sees how sad his uncle is and has to acknowledge that Tito Danilo is telling the truth. Jay says that maybe Jun was using the money from selling drugs to help others, but he trails off.
Tito Danilo is describing a cycle of addiction: people start using shabu to stave off hunger, then they get addicted and end up selling shabu so they can keep using. Poverty is at the root of this cycle, so while Jun would have been responsible for his choice to sell drugs, there are other factors at play, too. In this way, the novel makes clear that using drugs and selling drugs are themselves not reasons to brand someone as being “bad”—which of course is exactly what Tito Maning would do. At the same time, Jay finds that he can no longer continue to tell the story of Jun as being some kind of perfect saint either.
Themes
Grace asks who killed Jun, and Tito Danilo says that it doesn’t matter, because Jun’s murderer was probably someone trying to “feed his family.” Apparently, the killer was a vigilante who would have been paid for the kill. Jay is angry that everyone is okay with this system, but Tito Danilo says that this isn’t the United States and asks if Jay would have cared about the drug war if it weren’t for Jun. Jay asks why the Church isn’t doing anything, and Tito Danilo says the Church doesn’t interfere in politics. Jay feels that all adults have let him down: Tito Danilo doesn’t think the Church should be involved, Tita Chato gave up, Tito Maning is complicit, and Jay’s dad doesn’t care.
Initially, Jay thought he would use a series of clues to piece together who was responsible for Jun’s death, and that in doing so he would reveal Jun to be a hero fighting against the evil government of the Philippines. The truth turns out to be much more complicated. Even the vigilante who pulled the trigger was motivated by external forces, namely poverty and the government’s anti-drug policies. And, regarding those dug policies, many people in the Philippines support them, even if many others don’t. Jay can’t point the finger at anyone, at least not decisively. Even Jun himself isn’t entirely innocent, as Grace initially claimed he was in the anonymous DM. In a way, no one can be clearly blamed for being responsible, while at the same time everyone avoids taking any responsibility. Jay’s indictment of all the adults seems like the accusations of an angry teenager, and also accurate.
Themes
Tito Danilo goes to call the family and tell them that Jay and Grace are here, and that he’ll drive them back after breakfast. Jay and Grace sit and cry together. They’re losing Jun in a whole new way now. Jay says he can’t believe the story, and Grace says that none of it is right. Jay watches a bird fly to a nest in the ceiling, and it reminds him of when the puppy died years ago and Jay’s mom told him to listen to the birds. At the time, she claimed that death creates space for life, but no life has emerged from Jun’s death.
Grace and Jay have lost the story of Jun that they were holding onto. For them, Jun had become the idealistic antidote to various failures and complicities of the adults in their lives (and running the Philippines). But the real story robs them of that version of Jun, and Jay is forced to reckon with the fact that he can’t find or make a meaning out of Jun’s death. He had thought that revealing the truth of Jun’s death would unleash a flood that would lead to new life, but now he finds that it is just what it is—death.
Themes
