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
At the track team bake sale on Halloween, Jared mans the toaster oven to help bake the cookies, which he uses as a cover for when kids outside his circle ask him for marijuana cookies—he simply tells them that he bakes for the track team. One Goth kid, Alex Gunborg, approaches Jared and asks if he has any other cookies, but Jared plays dumb and says that they only have chocolate chip or a vegan option. Alex leaves, disappointed.
Jared often uses drugs as a form of escapism, and it seems that the other kids at his school do too. Jared sells drugs in the form of cookies baked with marijuana, and there seems to be a high demand for them, which suggests that drug use is a systemic problem in Jared’s community.
Themes
After the bake sale, Jared watches Mr. Jaks while Mrs. Jaks is at the doctor as promised. Jared helps maintain some of the lawn equipment before helping Mr. Jaks bathe. They then sit in the kitchen and are drinking tea together when Mrs. Jaks comes back with a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken before disappearing inside her bedroom. Mrs. Jaks hates buying pre-cooked meals, so Jared knows she got bad news at the doctor.
This passage again illustrates how much responsibility Jared takes for Mr. and Mrs. Jaks despite his young age. In showing how Jared watches Mr. Jaks and helps keep up their house, the book underscores Jared’s mature instinct to care for the adults in his life, which likely results from the responsibility he has to take with his own parents.
Themes
Every Wednesday after school, Jared delivers the Northern Sentinel, and near the end of his paper route is Mrs. Brantford’s house. Her son grows medicinal marijuana and regularly gives her some for her glaucoma. When Jared was 14, he delivered a vaporizer that Death Threat sold her, and Jared showed her how to work it; they got high together in her living room. Today, she invites Jared in for a cup of cocoa—a signal they share that she has marijuana to sell him. She gives him the drugs, and they chat about her bad luck at the slot machines.
Jared’s mom’s boyfriends have been involved in drug-dealing—and, in Death Threat’s case, even involved Jared in that business. And other adults in his life, like Mrs. Brantford, condone and participate in this behavior rather than trying to protect Jared. This is another aspect of Jared’s life that’s forced him to grow up: even from age 14, he was familiar with marijuana vaporizers. And now, at 16, he essentially runs his own business selling marijuana cookies and feels comfortable doing drugs with the adults he knows. In this way, the recklessness and illegal activity of the adults in Jared’s life have caused him to grow up quickly.
Themes
After finishing his route, Jared takes the bus to a nearby pizza place. The cook knows his mom from her party days, so she sometimes gives Jared the single slices that she would normally throw out. After a slice, Jared heads to a friend’s house in the neighborhood to bake cookies with the marijuana that Mrs. Brantford gave him. The house, which everyone calls Powder House, is unlocked. A cardboard figure of Darth Vader with a snowboard and a thought bubble saying “POWDER HOUSE RULES” hangs on the door. Amid the posters and futons and blow-up furniture, only one blond guy is passed out on a beanbag chair—no one else is home.
Darth Vader marks the entrance of Jared’s friends’ house, and the cardboard poster is a symbol of childhood innocence and freedom in several ways. First, the character is from Star Wars, a sci-fi franchise that a kid like Jared would have grown up with. Second, his “POWDER HOUSE RULES” sign exhibits a teenage exuberance in having a place independent from adults. In this way, the Darth Vader poster symbolizes the carefree nature of adolescence—a lightheartedness that Jared seems to yearn for and tries to escape to whenever he can.
Themes
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Jared washes the bowls and pots before grabbing ingredients from the kitchen. He usually gives the residents free cookies for their use of the kitchen, and they usually buy the rest of his cookies fresh. Jared is amazed that they can keep their jobs with the amount they smoke. He shakes the marijuana into a bowl and starts melting the butter when he hears the front door open. As he turns to see who it is, someone whacks him with a frying pan on the side of the head.
This incident establishes one of the reasons that it’s so hard for Jared to view violence as a part of a loving relationship. He also experiences violence outside of the context of those relationships, like when he gets hit in the head here, so it’s difficult for him to see violence in the same way that his mother does.
Themes
When Jared wakes up, the smoke alarm is blaring, and the kitchen reeks of burned butter. Jared rolls over and vomits up the pizza he ate. The blond guy curses at Jared and tells him to burn down his own place. Jared looks down: his jacket, shoes, wallet, and cell phone are missing, as is the marijuana. His inner voice tells him that it could be worse—he’s breathing, at least. Jared starts to get up, but he sways. The blond guy makes him clean up his vomit, but Jared just gets nauseous again and throws up in the sink.
Jared’s marijuana cookie baking is not a simple or safe business: it is a risky endeavor, and not one that most kids his age would take on. Jared, however, needs the money because his parents aren’t able to provide for him. He’s witnessed his mom’s boyfriends’ drug-dealing, which seems to have influenced him to start dealing as well. In this way, the adults in his life have led him to put himself at risk and to take on more financial responsibility than is perhaps fair.
Themes
At that moment, some of Jared’s friends get back to the house. Jared tells them that someone hit him in the kitchen, but he doesn’t know who did it. One guy, Kyle, says that they have marijuana and demands that Jared make cookies, but Jared wants to go home. Another guy, Saul, tells Kyle to go easy—Jared is just a kid. Saul tells Jared that they all got fired from their jobs after they got drug tested, and they’re a little bummed out.
Jared is so mature and experiences so many adult situations (like dealing drugs or getting mugged) that even his friends forget that he’s “just a kid.” This reinforces his dysfunctional home life has made him more mature than other teens his age, to the point that even his peers treat him like an adult.
Themes
Jared makes the guys a batch of cookies, which they give him money for even though it’s their marijuana, and then they phone their friends for one last blowout. Jared sips a beer as the guys eat the cookies and the party starts. Saul gives him a muscle relaxer pill, and Jared washes it down with beer before going to lay down in Saul’s bedroom. Jared considers calling his mom, but he knows that she and Richie would just end up joining the party, and he’d still be stuck here.
Here, Jared again uses alcohol to escape the pain of being hit in the head, while his friends use alcohol and marijuana to avoid facing the fact that they were fired from their jobs (for smoking pot, no less). In addition, this passage again illustrates how the adults in his life have forced him to become more responsible than his mom or Richie. Rather than taking care of him and bringing him home after he was assaulted, Jared suggests that they would simply join in the teenage party.
Themes
Just then, a pretty girl with blue hair enters the room asking if he’s the “Cookie Dude.” Jared sits up on the bed and introduces himself, and she says her name is Murchadh. She says that she likes the magic in his baking, and that she senses loss in him. As she sits next to him on the bed, Jared explains that his dog died. Murchadh says that they’re all going to die soon—they’ve entered the Anthropocene, the human-driven extinction event.
In referencing the Anthropocene, Murchadh expands on the unnamed narrator’s environmentalist sentiments from Chapter 2. In this real-life period, human impact is the driving force for environmental changes, showing how human destruction of the environment is dangerous and could potentially lead to a mass extinction event. With this, the book highlights the need to respect and care for the natural world.
Themes
Murchadh kisses Jared, and when she pulls away, her lips sparkle. She says that her mother was a Selkie, and she asks what he is—but he only responds that he’s high. As Murchadh starts unbuttoning his shirt, she says that Jared has the moon in his eyes, and that she comes from the ocean.
In Norse and Celtic mythology, a Selkie is a creature that can shapeshift from seal to human form. Murchadh thus represents a connection between humans and nature, making it apt for her to spread a warning about humanity’s destruction of the environment.
Themes
