Unwind

Unwind

by

Neal Shusterman

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Themes and Colors
Inequality, Injustice, and the Law Theme Icon
Anger, Violence, and Radicalization Theme Icon
Activism, Compassion, and Atonement Theme Icon
Morality and Perspective Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Unwind, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Activism, Compassion, and Atonement Theme Icon

Once Connor and Risa find themselves in the hands of sympathetic adults who want to save them from being unwound, the novel begins to pay close attention to the avenues available to individuals who wish to push back against the system and fight for a better future. Specifically, though it does illustrate that turning to terrorism, as Lev does, is one available path, it shows clearly that activism and resistance that are rooted in compassion, kindness, and sacrificing one’s own comfort or safety for the greater good are far more meaningful. Further, it also makes the case that a person’s past misdeeds can be one of the greatest inspirations to become an activist in the first place, and that centering one’s activism on compassion and making the world a better place is a healthy and meaningful way to atone for one’s past mistakes.

After being separated from Lev, Connor and Risa are shocked to discover the sheer number of adults willing to help them escape being unwound. A young teacher named Hannah helps get them out of a high school where they were hiding, while an old woman named Sonia inserts Connor and Risa into a complex underground system of safe houses that ultimately lands them in the Graveyard, a site for decommissioned airplanes in Arizona which is secretly a refugee camp that houses more than 400 Unwinds, run by a man known as the Admiral. The very existence of this underground system is a clear indicator that there are many people who don’t agree with the policy of unwinding and care deeply about children’s right to life and their right to bodily autonomy, even if caring means putting themselves in danger. The novel doesn’t go deeply into every resistance fighter’s reason for participating in this system, but not offering a reason also creates the sense that these people don’t necessarily need a reason. Rather, they resist because they know it’s the morally right thing to do and they have the power to do so—not necessarily for personal gain. Experiencing the kindness of these adults is ultimately what propels Connor and Risa into jobs at the Graveyard that situate them as helpers and leaders: Risa trains as a medic and provides basic healthcare and first aid, while Connor begins as a mechanic and eventually becomes the Admiral’s second in command tasked with discovering who killed the Goldens. This begins to show that kindness, compassion, and the best ways to help others can be taught and learned—especially when considered next to the fact that Lev, who experiences no such kindness before also finding himself in the Graveyard, ultimately turns to terrorism.

For some, most notably the Admiral, being a part of the resistance in this way is more than just a way to do good in the world. For him, it’s a way to atone for unwinding his son years ago. Connor learns that the Admiral’s son Harlan was the starting point for the urban legend of Humphrey Dunfee, whose parents, according to legend, went on a killing spree after he was unwound and murdered everyone who received a body part from him. In reality, the Admiral was a high-ranking official in government, and when Harlan began acting out, he was pressured to set an example and agreed to unwind his son. Helping other Unwinds, then, is a way for the Admiral to atone for doing an unspeakable thing to his son. The Admiral also sets examples of positive resistance in other ways. Though Unwinds at the Graveyard suspect that he’s actually profiting off of the Unwinds and even takes body parts from those he unwinds (there’s a great deal of speculation about his perfect teeth), in actuality, the Admiral wears dentures as an act of resistance against the practice of organ harvesting. Later, when he has a heart attack, he refuses a donor heart, and instead demands whatever heart attack treatment doctors practiced before they had a refrigerator full of working hearts to pull from. Through the Admiral, the novel offers a variety of ways that a person can resist by sacrificing his own comfort and making sure he doesn’t benefit from the system he’s trying to take down—actions inspired by his own horrific choices.

The novel’s ending briefly touches on how to be a good activist. Connor, in charge of the Graveyard now that the Admiral isn’t well enough to run it, takes the clappers’ example as an example of what not to do, and instead tells the Unwinds that they’ll focus on rescuing teens from harvest camps or from buses headed to camps. He insists that it’s extremely important to paint Unwinds as thinking, feeling individuals with a right to their own lives and bodies, rather than playing into the stereotype that Unwinds are violent kids who are better off unwound. In this sense, Connor also uses his own past to inform his activism, as he was one of those boys whose actions made his parents feel as though he’d be more useful to society unwound. Further, Lev hears that CyFi, a boy with a donated temporal lobe that causes him intense grief and suffering (he experiences thoughts and emotions that belong to the original owner of the temporal lobe), is going to testify in Congress in favor of stopping unwinding, or at least decreasing the window of time in which a child can be unwound, thereby making it easier for runaways to survive simply by making it so they don’t have to be on the run for as long. Through these examples, Unwind suggests that nonviolent activism, undertaken with compassion and respect for everyone’s bodily autonomy, is an extremely important and meaningful way through which to change the world—and on a personal level, standing up for what is right and helping others can help a person come to terms with their own horrific and traumatizing mistakes.

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Activism, Compassion, and Atonement Quotes in Unwind

Below you will find the important quotes in Unwind related to the theme of Activism, Compassion, and Atonement.
Chapter 14 Quotes

“Anyway, since it was legally ours, we paid for the funeral. It didn’t even have a name, and my parents couldn’t bear to give it one. It was just ‘Baby Lassiter,’ and even though no one had wanted it, the entire neighborhood came to the funeral. People were crying like it was their baby that had died...And that’s when I realized that the people who were crying—they were the ones who had passed that baby around. They were the ones, just like my own parents, who had a hand in killing it.”

Related Characters: Connor Lassiter (speaker), Risa Ward, Lev Calder, Didi, Connor’s Dad, Connor’s Mom
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:

“People shouldn’t do a lot of things,” says Connor. He knows they’re both right, but it doesn’t make a difference. In a perfect world mothers would all want their babies, and strangers would open up their homes to the unloved. In a perfect world everything would be either black or right, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn’t a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is.

Related Characters: Connor Lassiter (speaker), Risa Ward, Lev Calder, Didi
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

Please what? the teacher thinks. Please break the law? Please put myself and the school at risk? But, no, that’s not it at all. What he’s really saying is: Please be a human being. With a life so full of rules and regiments, it’s so easy to forget that’s what they are. She knows—she sees—how often compassion takes a back seat to expediency.

Related Characters: The Teacher/Hannah (speaker), Connor Lassiter, Risa Ward, Didi
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

“You might think I’m stupid, but I got a good reason for the way I feel,” Emby says. “When I was little, I was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. Both my lungs were shutting down. I was gonna die. So they took out both my dying lungs and gave me a single lung from an Unwind. The only reason I’m alive is because that kid got unwound.”

“So,” says Connor, “Your life is more important than his?”

“He was already unwound—it’s not like I did it to him. If I didn’t get that lung, someone else would have.”

Related Characters: Connor Lassiter (speaker), Emby (speaker), Hayden, Harlan Dunfee, Diego
Page Number: 168-69
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

And all at once Cy realizes that Tyler doesn’t know. The part of that boy which comprehends time and place isn’t here, and never will be. Tyler can’t understand that he’s already gone, and nothing Cy can do will ever make him understand. So he goes on wailing.

Related Characters: Lev Calder, Cyrus Finch/CyFi, Tyler
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

The days begin to pass quickly, and before she realizes it, she’s been there a month. Each day that goes by adds to her sense of security. The Admiral was an odd bird, but he’d done something no one else had been able to do for her since she’d left StaHo. He’d given her back her right to exist.

Related Characters: Risa Ward, Admiral Dunfee
Page Number: 202
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 34 Quotes

“The Admiral’s out of touch,” he would say. “He doesn’t know what it’s like to be one of us. He can’t possibly understand who we are and what we need.” And in groups of kids he’s already won over, he whispers his theories about the Admiral’s teeth, and his scars, and his diabolical plans for all of them. He spreads fear and distrust, using it to unite as many kids as he can.

Related Characters: Roland (speaker), Connor Lassiter, Admiral Dunfee, The Teacher/Hannah, Sonia
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis:

“Of course, if more people had been organ donors, unwinding never would have happened...but people like to keep what’s theirs, even after they’re dead. It didn’t take long for ethics to be crushed by greed. Unwinding became big business, and people let it happen.”

Related Characters: Admiral Dunfee (speaker), Connor Lassiter
Related Symbols: The Bill of Life
Page Number: 224
Explanation and Analysis:

“It’s only because of his unwinding that you’re all here. Afterward, my wife left me and formed a foundation in Harlan’s memory. I left the military, spent several years more drunk than I am now, and then, three years ago, I had The Big Idea. This place, these kids, are the result of it. To date I’ve saved more than a thousand kids from unwinding.”

Related Characters: Admiral Dunfee (speaker), Connor Lassiter, Harlan Dunfee
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35 Quotes

He could join them just out of spite, but that’s not enough—not this time. There must be more. Yet, as he stands there, Lev realizes that there is more. It’s invisible, but it’s there, like the deadly charge lurking in a downed power line. Anger, but not just anger: a will to act on it as well.

“All right, I’m in.” Back at home Lev always felt part of something larger than himself. Until now, he hadn’t realized how much he missed that feeling.

Related Characters: Lev Calder (speaker), Cyrus Finch/CyFi, Cleaver, Mai, Blaine
Page Number: 230
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 55 Quotes

“How can you do this?” she asks during one of their breaks. “How can you watch them day after day, going in and never coming out?”

“You get used to it,” the drummer tells her, taking a swig of water. “You’ll see.”

“I won’t! I can’t!” She thinks about Connor. He doesn’t have this same reprieve from unwinding. He doesn’t stand a chance. “I can’t be an accomplice to what they’re doing!”

Related Characters: Risa Ward (speaker), Connor Lassiter, Dalton
Page Number: 274
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 57 Quotes

Lev was terrified of these people, and yet he felt a kinship with them. They understood the misery of being betrayed by life. They understood what it felt like to have less than nothing inside you. And when they told Lev how important he was in the scheme of things, Lev felt, for the first time in a long time, truly important.

Related Characters: Lev Calder, Cleaver, Mai, Blaine
Page Number: 284
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 65 Quotes

It is only when a clapper brings his hands together that the lie reveals itself, abandoning the clapper in that final instant so that he exits this world utterly alone, without so much as a lie to accompany him into oblivion.

Related Characters: Connor Lassiter, Lev Calder, Mai, Blaine
Page Number: 305
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 68 Quotes

“You may be responsible for your actions,” Pastor Dan says, “but it’s not your fault you weren’t emotionally prepared for life out there in the real world. This was my fault—and the fault of everyone who raised you to be a tithe. We’re as guilty as the people who pumped that poison into your blood.”

Related Characters: Pastor Dan (speaker), Lev Calder, Lev’s Dad
Page Number: 328
Explanation and Analysis: