Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Runner, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Money, Class, and Community
Growing Up
Grief
Ambition
Crime
Summary
Analysis
Charlie gives Nostrils’s address to the doctor, leaves the hospital, and vomits on the side of the road. He goes home, and when he wakes the next morning, he realizes that Nostrils will not be playing his new position in the football game today. Charlie goes downstairs for breakfast and sees his mother looking healthy, with no powder on her face. She tells Charlie to follow her. They go outside, and Mrs. Feehan ceremoniously throws away her tin of white face powder.
While Charlie is consumed by guilt about Nostrils, Mrs. Feehan is overcoming her own trauma and grief. The fact that she brings Charlie out to watch her throw away her face powder suggests that she plans to be more open with him about her mental state in the future.
Themes
