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 laser tag place is closed, so Mia and Jay decide to visit the aquarium instead. Jay makes dumb comments about the stores they pass and asks why the models in billboards have such light skin, to which Mia says only, “Colonialism.” The aquarium has a jellyfish exhibit and Jay tells Mia that there’s a jellyfish that can live forever, because it can revert its cells when it gets old. But the jellyfish is usually eaten before it gets old. Mia wonders what it would be like if humans could revert their ages, too.
Jay finally learns that the Philippines’ colonial history plays into the country’s beauty standards—in fact, Mia seems to be the first person to answer Jun’s questions about the Philippines honestly and openly. Jay’s comment about the jellyfish seems related to his fixation on Jun’s death. The jellyfish have a lot of potential—they could hypothetically live forever—but almost always die young because of others’ violence. Mia’s wondering suggests she is a kindred spirit to Jay, a potential new, real friend—a friend, like Jun, across cultures.
Themes
Jay asks if Grace and Jessa are dating, and Mia says yes—they met on an anime fan forum. Jay asks how old Mia is, and she says she’s 19. Jay says he’s 17; Mia jokingly calls him a baby. He points out that he’ll graduate soon, and she asks what his plan is. He says he’ll go to college but is unenthused. She understands: college “isn’t for everyone.” It was right for her, though, since she studies journalism now. It's a dangerous profession, she admits—she says that in 2009, 32 Filipino journalists were killed on a politician’s orders, and comments that there’s no safety if you want to report the truth. Jay wants to ask if she supports the drug war, but he’s nervous that she might, since he knows that most Filipinos do.
Here is another sign that Tito Maning’s control over his family is just on the surface. Jun had once told Jay that Tito Maning didn’t let his kids use the Internet very much—but Grace met her secret girlfriend on an Internet forum! Mia is the first person to immediately empathize with Jay’s confusion about college, even though it’s not a confusion she had herself—this makes her very different from someone like Seth, who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand Jay’s different experiences. The incident Mia references is a real one, now known as the Maguindanao massacre. On November 23, 2009, a group of people—which included around 34 journalists—were trying to file paperwork for a political candidate when they were kidnapped and killed by people working for the candidate’s opponent. Thus far in the novel, Jay has viewed the truth as a purely good thing. Mia’s story demonstrates that seeking the truth professionally can also be dangerous. It seems possible that Mia doesn’t support the drug war—she seems to be against government corruption, and Jay already knows that the Philippine government is covering up how many individuals have died. Still, Jay’s decision not to ask her shows that he listened to his mom, who told him that most people in the Philippine’s support the drug war.
Themes
After the aquarium, Mia and Jay head to the ice-skating rink. At this point, Jay isn’t surprised by how much this mall contains. In fact, he thinks the expansive mall sums up the many contradictions of the Philippines. As they lace up their skates, Mia asks why Jay is going to college if he doesn’t want to. He says his parents would disown him otherwise, but then, thinking of Jun, he admits that’s not totally true. Still, they’d be disappointed. But Mia believes that rebellion can be a good thing. Her parents wanted her to study nursing and leave the Philippines. They worry about her safety now, but she had to follow her passion.
When Jay first arrived in the Philippines, he was shocked that the country didn’t look like it was in the midst of a war. He no longer feels that shock when faced with the giant mall and all its activities. Now, he knows that the Philippines is more complicated, rich and poor, peaceful and enduring a drug war. This is a nuanced understanding he didn’t have before. Meanwhile, Jay is also coming to a more nuanced understanding about his relationship with his parents. He previously thought they’d freak out if he applied to a lower-tier school, but now that he sees how bad Jun’s relationship with Tito Maning must have been, he knows that his parents might not have reacted quite as badly as he thinks. Mia’s relationship with her parents seems like a potential hopeful model for Jay: they disagreed with her about her intended life path, but she went ahead with what she wanted to do and they eventually accepted it (even if they worry now).
Themes
Mia decided that she wanted to be a journalist after reading an investigative piece about child trafficking. The article showed her that she could use her writing skill and intrinsic nosiness to help others. Jay asks how a person finds the truth as a journalist, and Mia says it usually starts with research. In the Philippines, that’s hard, since records can be incomplete. So you have to talk to people. Jay continues to ask Mia for tips on finding information without telling her why, thinking of Jun’s anonymous friend and Tito Maning. He asks how to get a source to talk, and she says one can steal information or figure out an alternative way.
Jay is beginning to discover his limitations as a detective—he doesn’t know how to find information in the Philippines or how to interrogate suspects, and he doesn’t know how to follow up on the leads he already has (the anonymous Instagram, the note in Tagalog). Initially, he thought he’d just demand the truth from Tito Maning. When that didn’t pan out, he thought he could find (or in his case, steal) clues that pointed to the truth. Now he knows that finding the truth won’t be as simple as he thought it would be.
Themes
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Suddenly, the power shuts off in the mall, which Mia says happens often. Jay worries about the jellyfish in the aquarium, but Mia is sure there’s a backup generator. Meanwhile, everyone can keep skating, so they stay at the rink. Mia can tell Jay is upset and asks him why. He decides he’ll never learn the truth about Jun if he doesn’t ask hard questions, so he asks her if Jessa knows what happened to Jun. Mia is confused: she didn’t even know Grace had a brother. Jay can’t believe Grace erased Jun from her life so thoroughly.
The loss of electricity in the mall—this symbol of commercial wealth—is another sign of the complicated nature of the Philippines, in which even the wealthy places are subject to underlying instability. Jay’s worry about the jellyfish suggests that he had begun to associate them with Jun in some way. If they can live forever, he wants them to—he wants something to escape death. Meanwhile, Mia once again proves how different she is from Jay’s parents or from Seth. She can see that Jay is upset, and instead of ignoring it, she asks him to open up to her. Because she invites that open communication, he tells her the truth. And in revealing his truth, he discovers how much Grace has hidden hers.
Themes
Jay explains that Jun ran away and was killed. Mia realizes Jay wants to figure out what happened to him and that’s why he was asking for journalism tips. He tells her the full story, and she asks to see the photo of the note Jay found. It’s blurry, but she can read it. The handwritten question is from a subordinate detective, who says that he found Jun at Tito Maning’s request and asks what Tito Maning wants to do. Mia assumes that the list Jay found was of suspected drug dealers. The police are supposed to arrest them before they kill them. Jay wonders whether Tito Maning told the police to kill Jun, and he thinks of the Biblical story in which Abraham was prepared to kill his son.
By opening up to Mia, by forging a bond across cultures and discovering there are similarities between people despite cultural boundaries, Jay gets closer to the truth. This revelation does make it clear that Tito Maning was looking for Jun, and perhaps implicates Maning in Jun’s death. That said, the novel has shown multiple times that there is often a deeper truth lying beneath what seems like the truth, and Jay has been suspicious of Tito Maning all along. It’s notable, also, that in the Bible story Jay references, Abraham doesn’t end up killing his son after all (though, admittedly, that’s only because God tells him not to).
Themes
Mia says that she’ll help Jay. She wants Jay to take a photo of the list with Jun’s name on it, and in the meantime, Jay should figure out a way to get Tito Maning to talk. Mia will tap into her newspaper and police connections. They exchange phone numbers and finally start to skate. Jay thinks Mia doesn’t know how to skate, but she does, and Jay slips while he’s trying to demonstrate. Mia laughs.
Jay and Mia are both in detective mode now, but this time, it seems like they have reason to be (unlike Jay’s blind assumption that Tito Maning took Jun’s letters). And, further, Mia’s expertise means they have actual skills to bring to bear in researching what happened to Jun. Though Jay’s slip and fall on the ice again signals that his newfound confidence might not be based on as solid a foundation as he thinks.
Themes
