Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Unwind, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Inequality, Injustice, and the Law
Anger, Violence, and Radicalization
Activism, Compassion, and Atonement
Morality and Perspective
Summary
Analysis
The day after Christmas, the Fatigues wake all the kids in the warehouse up. Connor notices that the safeties on the Fatigues’ weapons are off. The Fatigues herd kids into a room filled with airline packing crates. They ask the kids to divide up by gender, four to a crate, and hurry the process. Connor sees Roland coming for him and knows that in a crate, Roland will kill him. Connor punches one of Roland’s friends, which makes a Fatigue haul him back and shove him toward a different crate with three other boys. They seal the boys in the crate.
Here, punching Roland’s friend in order to escape being trapped in a crate with Roland shows just how far Connor has come. Although this is an act of violence that shouldn’t be condoned, it likely saves both Connor and Roland from a worse fate. A month ago, Connor may have simply allowed Roland to instigate a major fight, something that wouldn’t have helped either of them—and if it’s true that Roland has a knife, this could’ve gotten Connor killed.
Themes
A nasally voice belonging to a kid known as Mouth Breather, Emby for short, insists they’re going to die. Connor threatens to shove his sock in Emby’s mouth and Hayden offers his sock. The fourth boy introduces himself as Diego. Their crate begins to move. Emby continues to anxiously insist they’re going to die. Connor snaps at him but feels bad and reassures Emby. Hayden suggests that dying is better than being unwound and asks the others for their opinions. Connor tells him to stop as they take off.
Remember that Hayden thrives on this kind of philosophical debate, while for Connor, it’s easier to think of the world as existing in black and white and not engage with hard questions like this. This sets up this journey as one in which Connor will begin to experiment more with alternate perspectives, simply because he can’t escape Hayden’s questions.
Themes
In the air, Connor and his crate mates don’t speak for a while. Quietly, Diego says he’d rather be unwound. Emby says he’d rather die, since he’d go to Heaven, but Connor thinks that if they’ve all done horrible things that made their parents want to unwind them, they’re not going to Heaven. Emby insists that Unwinds are still technically alive, and Hayden asks if the others believe this. Connor tries to stop the conversation, but Emby pipes up that he doesn’t think unwinding is bad—he just doesn’t want to be unwound. When he was a kid, his lungs started to shut down from pulmonary fibrosis, and an Unwind’s lung saved him. He insists that the kid was already unwound and if he hadn’t gotten the lung, someone else would’ve.
Emby’s argument is a controversial one for a variety of reasons. While the fact that he’s alive is positive, his situation raises the moral dilemma of whether Emby’s life or the Unwind’s life is more important than the other—and then, if the Unwind’s life is unimportant enough to deny him or her their right to their own body. Further, when Emby insists that someone else would’ve gotten the lung if he hadn’t, it shows that Emby doesn’t believe there’s anything he can do to change the system.
Themes
This enrages Connor, who points out that without unwinding, there would be more doctors trying to cure diseases rather than replacing body parts. Ferociously, Emby says that Connor would feel differently if he was staring down death, but Connor insists he’d rather die. Emby goes into a coughing fit that concerns everyone. When he recovers, he explains that his parents could only afford an asthmatic lung. Hayden asks why Emby’s parents are unwinding him if they went to the trouble of fixing him, but Emby says his parents died and his aunt signed the order since she has three kids to put through college. Hayden grumbles that it’s always about money.
Hayden’s aside that it’s always about money is correct in a number of ways. The idea that Emby’s parents couldn’t afford a healthy lung suggests that there are a number of families, like Emby’s, who can’t afford care that’s going to give them the best chance at life—which suggests that there are also others who can’t afford transplants at all, and may therefore die. This economic inequality speaks to the way in which the system created by unwinding doesn’t actually serve everyone fairly.
Themes
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Hayden points out that nobody answered whether unwinding kills a person. Diego suggests that it depends on where a person’s soul is when they’re unwound. Connor suggests that the soul might break up during the unwinding process, but Diego insists that souls are indivisible. Hayden wonders if an Unwind’s soul stretches out over its corresponding body parts. Connor finds this thought terrifying and remembers the trucker whose arm could do card tricks. He wonders if the arm’s original owner still enjoys the tricks and thinks that even if souls aren’t real, an Unwind’s consciousness must go somewhere.
This conversation again introduces all four boys to new perspectives on unwinding and the soul, something that helps all of them develop empathy and form bonds with each other. This begins to show that open dialogues like these are an extremely effective and nonviolent way to bring people together to calmly discuss difficult concepts.
Themes
Hayden says he knew a girl who believed that God knows who’s going to be unwound and doesn’t give them souls, like the unborn. Emby insists that the law states that the unborn have souls from conception. Connor points out that being a law doesn’t make it true, but Emby argues that by the same token, that doesn’t mean it’s false. He believes the law is what is because lots of people thought about it and decided it made sense, which both Diego and Hayden agree with. Hayden asks for a true opinion from Emby. Emby says that unborn babies have souls from the moment they kick and suck their thumbs. Hayden turns on Connor, who insists that babies get souls when they’re born. Diego says they’re both wrong: people, unborn and otherwise, have souls from the moment they’re loved.
When Emby insists that the law exists because lots of people decided it made sense, it shows that he holds a decidedly optimistic view of how his government works. Later, the reader learns that this is a questionable, if not entirely false, view of government within the novel. Emby’s acceptance of what the law says, meanwhile, nevertheless speaks to the ability of something that’s law to easily become normalized and considered correct. However, because Connor has seen firsthand that not all are as just as they might seem in theory, he’s unwilling to buy this idea.
Themes
With prodding, Hayden admits he doesn’t know when people or babies get souls. Connor insists this is the best answer, as if more people would admit they didn’t know, there might not have been a Heartland War. They feel the plane descend and everyone panics a little. Emby wonders if they’re actually going to a harvest camp. The boys start to list where they’d like their body parts to go if Emby is right.
Connor makes the case here that it’s impossible to come to one set understanding of what constitutes right and wrong, but that this isn’t a bad thing. Rather, it’s only bad when people get too caught up in arguing over who’s right and who’s wrong.
Themes
