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
Eventually, the family reaches their barangay (neighborhood). The houses are packed together and most have locked gates and barbed-wire walls. Tita Ami asks if Jay remembers the neighborhood, and Jay says that he barely does. He’s been gone for eight years. Tomas remarks that eight years is a long time to be away from home. Tita Ami says that this is not Jay’s home. Tomas laughs, arguing that the place is in Jay’s blood. He says that maybe Jay will find a Filipina girl and settle down—that is, if he doesn’t already have an American girlfriend. Jay says that he doesn’t. He also asks Tomas to stop calling him “sir,” but Tomas won’t.
Though Jay noticed earlier that the Philippines isn’t the war zone he expected, the locked gates and wire hint that, once again, the truth of the situation is complicated. Tomas and Tita Ami are having the same type of debate that Jay and his mom had earlier: Tita Ami is saying that Jay can’t claim the Philippines as his home since he’s been away for so long, while Tomas is arguing that this is Jay’s home on a fundamental level, since he has Filipino “blood.” That Jay doesn’t make any comment during this mini-debate reflects his continued uncertainty about his identity, an uncertainty exacerbated by the fact that he is, like an American, uncomfortable with the commonplace Filipino practice of employees referring to their employers as “sir.”
Themes
Tito Maning’s house is larger and more modern than the other houses in the neighborhood. When they arrive, Tita Ami says that they recently renovated. Jay wants to see Jun’s room—eight years ago, it was crowded with posters, a guitar, a Nintendo Wii, bookshelves (Jun was already reading novels at the time). Jun’s room was clean, but he didn’t let the housekeeper touch it, not wanting someone else to clean up after him. Jay hopes that Jun’s room will provide clues about his death.
Tito Maning’s job as a police chief clearly pays well, and if the family recently renovated, he’s probably making more money now than he was before Duterte was elected. In other words, Tito Maning and his family benefit from Duterte’s policies. Jay’s memory of Jun’s room once again shows that Jun wouldn’t find Jay’s interest in things like video games shallow at all. Jun was smart, empathetic, and remarkably concerned with his own privilege (as his desire to not have someone else have to clean up after him shows), but he also owned a video game system. Jay’s idea that he might find “clues” about Jun’s death seems too easy, but Jay is in what might be described as “adolescent detective mode.”
Themes
The inside of the house looks similar to the way it looked eight years ago, but now there’s a new TV and Jun doesn’t appear in any of the family photos. Jay sees a woman puttering around—it’s the maid, María. Tita Ami takes Jay on a tour, and Jay asks if he’ll see Tita Chato and Tita Ines soon. Tita Ami says that Jay will see them when he goes to stay with them, but her family doesn’t speak with them anymore. Jay’s dad never told Jay this, and Tita Ami won’t elaborate.
The complete erasure of Jun from family photos hints that there are deeper secrets, both about Jun’s death and the family’s reaction to it. No one is willing to mourn Jun openly or even acknowledge him. Meanwhile, Jay’s entire Filipino family has stopped talking to each other, and it’s implied that the drug war tearing through the Philippines is also tearing apart Filipino families. There are lots of truths Jay still doesn’t know, and they seem to be related to Jun’s death (which again suggests that the truth about Jun’s death might be more complicated than Jay thinks).
Themes
As Tita Ami shows Jay around, Jay asks why they didn’t move houses instead of renovating, and she says that this is their home—they want to “improve it, not abandon it.” This is the type of passive-aggressive comment Jay remembers Tito Maning making to Jay’s dad the last time they visited. Through Jun’s letters, Jay learned that the family resented his dad for moving away. Jay says nothing to Tita Ami now, the same way his dad said nothing back then.
The rift between Jay’s dad and his Filipino family seems to be the result of different ideas about what one owes to one’s country and culture. And Jay’s dad’s complete break from the Philippines—and his silence and difficulty communicating more generally—seems to be a reaction to his Filipino family’s anger at his decision to leave. In this moment, Jay gets a glimpse of what his father has endured and why his father acts as he does.
Themes
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Tita Ami brings Jay to what she calls the “guest room,” which Jay knows is Jun’s old room. Jay has seen movies about grieving parents who leave their dead kid’s room untouched. But when he enters Jun’s room, he sees that it’s totally blank, filled with generic furniture. Empty drawers, nothing under the bed. Jay’s suitcase and backpack are already here. Jay sits on the floor and tries very hard not to cry—since he’s not a kid anymore. But he had expected to find some sign of Jun, not this empty slate. He wonders when Jun’s parents tossed all of his stuff, and whether they did it themselves or had Tomas and María do it.
Jay is judgmental of Tito Maning and Tita Ami for emptying out Jun’s room, and he bases that judgment on American movies’ portrayal of the “correct” way to grieve a child. And while the erasure of Jun does seem excessive, it can also be seen as evidence of a deep grief or anger. Jay’s refusal to cry while sitting on Jun’s floor calls back to when he cried over the puppy. He’s growing up, which he thinks means he shouldn’t show grief. But the lack of grief shown by Jun’s family also repulses him. Meanwhile, he wants Jun’s death to have meaning, which is the same thing he wanted from the puppy’s death.
Themes
Wanting to return Jun’s memory to the room, Jay takes out one of his cousin’s letters and reads it. In it, Jun asks Jay to write more about Jay’s recent trip to Europe. In the letter, Jun comments that Filipinos can’t travel much, probably because other countries don’t want to let them in for fear they’ll never leave. This might be fair, Jun thinks.
Jun’s letter hints at both his awareness of the Philippines’ political and economic climate and his own deep unhappiness. On the one hand, Jun is suggesting that things in the Philippines are so bad that Filipinos must all want to leave. On the other hand, Tita Ami clearly doesn’t want to leave, so it’s possible to see Jun’s comments as projections of his own desires to escape his unhappy situation at home and never come back.
Themes
Jay continues to read the letter. In it, Jun relates how he recently visited the slums with Tito Danilo to hand out sandwiches. Tito Maning had wanted Jun to see how spoiled he is. Jun liked helping others and realized the Church is actually doing some good, even if some priests are abusive. Jun also realized that the slums aren’t so bad—life goes on, even there. In many ways, Jun thinks it would be better to live in the slums than with Tito Maning. Jay is sad when he finishes reads the letter—Jun was clearly so unhappy. Even after he stops reading, Jay keeps thinking about Jun, which Jay thinks is a kind of rebellion in this blank room.
So far in the novel, Jay’s worldview has been pretty black-and-white: he thinks all lies are bad, and that people are either bad (Tito Maning) or good (Jun). Jun’s worldview was more nuanced—he sees both the bad and the good in the Catholic Church, and he sees value in the lives people live in the slums despite how hard and unpleasant it might be. In fact, it’s worth noting that Jay’s black-and-white way of seeing the world is similar to Tito Maning’s wholly-negative attitude about the slums and the poor. Yet as Jay seeks to solve Jun’s murder he also connects more with Jun’s ideas, which affect his own way of seeing the world and allow him to see Jun, and Jun’s unhappiness, more clearly.
Themes
