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
The next morning, Sarah’s uncles are due to arrive, and Jared goes over to the Jakses’. Mrs. Jaks starts to prepare the kitchen—Sarah’s uncles are bringing a moose for her to cook—while Sarah observes the proceedings in disgust. Jared helps get the smoker and vacuum sealer out for Mrs. Jaks and sharpens knives. Mrs. Jaks soon falls asleep, and Sarah paces, worried that her relatives aren’t going to like her. Jared says that if they don’t, it doesn’t matter.
It's unclear why Sarah’s uncles are visiting, but it could be that they’re coming to help care for her grandparents. If this is the case, it would take some of the burden off of Sarah, who is, of course, only a teenager. Because of Sarah’s mom’s inability to care for her parents herself, Sarah (and Jared) were forced into that adult role.
Themes
Sarah kisses Jared, and her hands start to travel, but Mrs. Jaks wakes and says that she can’t sleep through their noise. Sarah reminds her grandmother to take her pills—and just then, they hear a car arrive. Sarah’s uncle Doug, a tall, chubby Native guy, comes in, greeting Sarah warmly as she laughs in excitement and telling Mrs. Jaks to stop dieting. Another guy comes in along with two women, asking if Sarah and Jared can help unload the moose.
Sarah’s uncles’ arrival brings a parental kind of warmth and affection into her life, something that she’s lacked thus far in the book. Because Sarah has been cut off from her uncles for so long, she isn’t used to the type of kindness and support that they’re seemingly willing to offer her, just as Jared has few people in his life who are constantly caring and supportive. But Sarah’s excitement at her uncle’s greeting shows how she, like Jared, values a warm and loving relationship.
Themes
That night, after everyone is asleep, Sarah knocks on Jared’s basement door. She brings magic mushrooms, but Jared says that he’d rather stick to booze and marijuana. After Sarah and Jared have sex, she asks if she can shave his head, and he agrees. Sarah says that her uncles want the Jakses to live with them, and when she asks if Jared would visit her, Jared again says yes. Suddenly, Sarah says that Jared has fireflies around him in a swarm—but Jared can’t see anything, and he figures she’s just tripping. Sarah says that she used to see the fireflies when she was falling asleep, but her mom sent her to a shrink. She interrupts her own story to marvel at the fireflies, whom she says are traveling through time and space and singing.
Here, Sarah’s connection to the magical realm becomes even more evident, but Jared again dismisses anything supernatural by using the excuse that Sarah is just high. It’s clear that Sarah’s mom dismissed her magical abilities as well, believing that she had some kind of mental illness—and seeing a psychiatrist ultimately led to Sarah losing her ability to engage with her magic. Sarah’s consequent desperation to regain that connection illustrates that trying to avoid one’s problems doesn’t make them go away—in fact, it usually just makes them worse.
Themes
Sarah leans in to hear the song as Jared sips a beer. Noticing the fresh cuts on Sarah’s arm, he covers them with Polysporin and lays beside her. When he looks up, Darth Vader is gone, and he wonders how he missed the poster’s disappearance. Sarah says that there is no end to time. She wishes Jared could see what she sees, pressing her palm to his forehead. He notices that one of her cuts has opened and dripped blood on his face. She asks for the knife, but he refuses to give it to her while she’s wasted.
The Darth Vader poster’s disappearance is symbolic, as it represents a loss of innocence for Jared. Just as Darth Vader slowly decayed and disappeared without Jared really noticing, Jared’s maturation was also gradual in a way that Jared didn’t fully recognize. But the responsibilities that his parents forced on him have led him to essentially become an adult—he cares for adults and kids around him, and he’s taken on responsibilities of a homeowner—even though he is only 16 years old.
Themes
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While Jared wipes away the blood, Sarah says that Jared is hers, “now and forever.” Jared wishes that people could make declarations of love to him when they weren’t high or crazy. Sarah covers Jared’s eyes with her hands, and suddenly, the ceiling disappears. Jared sees nothing but sky and a swarm of fireflies, and around him is a wasteland with boulders and mud. He thinks that he must be dreaming, and he insists to himself that he wake up. Suddenly, he sees a naked man with a necklace of bones coming toward them and hissing.
Jared again illustrates his discomfort with mixing love and violence. Sarah tries to make her declaration of love after cutting herself, almost as if she’s making some kind of blood pact or sacrifice. But to Jared, this isn’t a proper substitute for warm affection, because he knows that she’s also distorting her mind with the psychedelic mushrooms. Additionally, Jared continues to brush off the magic around him by convincing himself that he is in a dream. But trying to do so does not protect him from the ape men coming toward them, suggesting that trying to avoid confusing or stressful situations isn’t an effective coping strategy.
Themes
The fireflies sink down from the sky, their swarm humming like an electric amplifier. Sarah stands, lifting her arms as blood streams down her skin. The naked man crawls along the ground like an ape, and more ape men gallop toward her and Jared. When the fireflies touch Sarah’s hand, her skin starts to shred off like she’s made of smoke, and Jared tries to wake himself up.
Jared continues trying to convince himself he’s dreaming, hoping that this will allow Sarah and him to escape from this alternate dimension. Yet this only makes Jared feel even more out of control, as Sarah now seems in danger of disintegrating completely. In this way, the book implies that the best way to control one’s problems is to address them directly rather than attempting to avoid them.
Themes
