Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Son of a Trickster, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Dysfunctional Families, Responsibility, and Maturity
Love vs. Violence
Escapism and Confronting Problems
The Environment and Human Destruction
Summary
Analysis
In French class, Jared’s inner voice gets a sudden urge for pizza, even though Jared doesn’t have any money. After school, he walks to the Pizzarama as though he has no control over his feet, and he sees the old Native woman with the monster hiding beneath her skin. Jared feels stoned, though he knows he’s not. The woman tells him that her name is Jwa’sins and comments that Jared must be very special, because she normally doesn’t share dreams with humans.
The magical elements in Jared’s life are becoming harder and harder to ignore. Not only does magic take control over his thoughts and actions, but Jwa’sins also tells him that he’s not entirely human. Still, Jared explains Jwa’sins away by telling himself that she’s a drug-induced hallucination. Rather than trying to understand and confront the magic in his life, he tries to rationalize it away or ignore it.
Themes
Jwa’sins offers Jared a pizza, but he eyes it suspiciously. She assures him that she’s not a witch, and Jared asks if she can read his thoughts. She says no, but that he gets very noisy when he’s upset or excited. She then tells Jared a story about a shaman with two sons. The older son wanted to be a shaman in the worst way, and so he went to the forest and cleansed himself, eating no food and poisoning himself—but no spirits came to him.
Jwa’sins’s story about the shaman’s sons is symbolic: the two sons represent Sarah and Jared. The older son represents Sarah, who tries to relate to her spirituality in any way that she can—even if it means hurting or poisoning herself, as she does when she cuts herself or uses drugs.
Themes
Jwa’sins goes on: the younger son wanted nothing to do with magic. He didn’t want his father’s lonely life, the fasting, or the blame that everyone piled on him when someone fell sick. But the spirits still flocked to the son, torturing him until he gave in and became a powerful shaman. Jared tells Jwa’sins that he didn’t want to come here, but she says that it was his curiosity that brought him here—not her. She asks if he sees spirits, but he says that he hasn’t—they aren’t real, and he doesn’t believe in magic.
The second son symbolizes Jared, as he tries to avoid any involvement in magic or spirituality whatsoever. But the book implies that avoiding one’s problems—both in the shaman story and in Jared’s life—only winds up torturing a person, as those problems gradually worsen when one ignores them instead of dealing with them directly.
Themes
Jared then asks what happened to the older son, and Jwa’sins says that he starved to death and haunted his brother, and then the brothers had a magical battle that killed them both. Jwa’sins gives Jared her phone number in case he ever sees a ghost—she can be his guide. She says goodbye to Jared and tells him it was lovely meeting him. Jared wonders how he knew she would be there, and his inner voice assures him that it’s just a strange coincidence. It quickly becomes clear to Jared that Jwa’sins was the old woman in his dream, and she came to find out if he saw ghosts—but this is a bizarre and unsettling prospect. He wants to forget what happened, but his inner voice tells him that he played Jwa’sins just right.
The ending of the shaman story hammers home the idea that trying to avoid one’s problems or use unhealthy coping mechanisms results in disaster, foreshadowing the problems that will befall Jared for continuing to ignore the magical world around him. This again suggests that it’s best to address problems head on.
Themes
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