Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Walk Two Moons, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Judgment, Perspective, and Storytelling
Parents, Children, and Growing Up
Grief
Nature
Summary
Analysis
Gram, Gramps, and Sal leave Wisconsin the next morning and enter Minnesota. Gramps is thrilled to have some scenery. Sal stays quiet; she doesn’t want to say anything about how she was terrified that her grandparents were going to leave her yesterday. Since Momma left, she’s been afraid of people leaving. At Gram’s prodding, Sal picks up Phoebe’s story again.
Here, the novel confirms that what made Sal so afraid yesterday was her trauma over Momma’s departure. It’s caused her to fear that no adults in her life are going to stick around, which makes it clear that Sal is still struggling to cope with her mother’s absence.
Themes
The next Saturday, as Sal and Phoebe are leaving for Mary Lou’s house, Phoebe finds another message on the porch. This one reads, “Everyone has his own agenda.” There’s nobody on the street. Mary Lou thinks the messages are exciting, but Phoebe is frightened. She’s afraid someone is watching their house.
Phoebe is mirroring Mrs. Winterbottom in her fear of these messages. There are less frightening explanations for where the messages came from, but Phoebe is eager to jump to conclusions that confirm her fears.
Themes
The girls try to figure out what the message means. They wonder if it’s for Mr. Winterbottom, since he goes to a lot of work meetings and meetings have agendas, but Phoebe doesn’t buy it. Sal knows what the previous message means. She explains that she used to picture two moons sitting in moccasins, but Dad says it actually means you shouldn’t judge people until you’ve been in their situation.
Here, Sal explains one of the novel’s central ideas: that it’s important to think about how other people see things. This has huge implications for what’s going on right now—Phoebe, at least, is totally unwilling to consider other people’s perspectives.
Themes
Phoebe looks suspicious, but Sal assures her that Dad isn’t leaving the messages. When Ben comes in, Mary Lou asks him what the phrases mean. He draws two moons in a pair of moccasins. Mary Lou suggests that perhaps Mr. Winterbottom is judging people at work, but Phoebe snaps that her father doesn’t judge people.
Sal and Ben seem to have a natural connection, which becomes clear when Ben draws exactly what Sal used to imagine when she hears this phrase. Phoebe is, again, unwilling to consider other people’s perspectives, which is why she snaps at Mary Lou rather than acknowledging her idea as a real possibility.
Themes
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Later, Phoebe, Sal, and Mary Lou walk to the drugstore. Tommy and Dougie invite themselves along, as does Ben. Tommy and Dougie run around making noise and chasing each other, and Phoebe asks how Mary Lou can stand it. Mary Lou says she’s used to it. Ben walks right behind Sal, and at one point, Tommy knocks Sal over. Ben catches her but then won’t let her go. Sal feels like there’s something crawling on her spine—but it’s not unpleasant. Finally, Ben lets go.
To Phoebe, the Finneys’ way of life is chaotic and totally beyond her understanding. But to Mary Lou, this is normal—another instance where two people look at the same thing with very different perspectives. Meanwhile, Ben’s crush on Sal becomes more apparent here, and it seems like Sal might reciprocate his feelings.
Themes
Sal starts to get scared at the drugstore. It feels like someone is watching her—and Sal notices the lunatic at the cash register, staring at her and Phoebe. Later, as Phoebe and Sal walk home, someone runs up behind them. Phoebe is convinced it’s the lunatic, but it’s just Ben. He offers to walk the girls home to protect them from lunatics and then suggests that they shouldn’t call the young man a lunatic. Ben refuses to elaborate. Then, he asks Sal if people touch each other at her house, since she flinches every time someone touches her. Sal insists she doesn’t flinch, but she has to make herself not flinch when Ben touches her arm.
Sal is starting to get pulled into Phoebe’s paranoid outlook on the world. So, things that normally wouldn’t scare her—like a young man at the cash register—are starting to look sinister. In this way, Phoebe seems to be influencing Sal to make negative assumptions about people she doesn’t know. Ben’s suggestion that Phoebe shouldn’t call the young man a lunatic (a term that implies that he’s crazy) suggests that Ben has some sort of negative association with this word and finds it offensive—perhaps because he or someone he knows has been called a lunatic before. Finally, Sal’s habit of flinching when people touch her implies that she’s pulling away from people emotionally. She’s afraid of getting too close, perhaps because Momma (the person she was closest to) left her.
Themes
Then, Ben asks where Momma is. Sal says she’s in Lewiston, Idaho, and she doesn’t feel like saying why. Ben reaches out to touch Sal’s arm again, and she flinches. Sal thinks about it, and she realizes that Dad doesn’t hug her much anymore. Her family used to hug all the time. As she walks, she remembers snuggling in bed with Momma. Momma had suggested they build a raft and float away. Sal used to think about floating away with Momma—but when Momma went to Lewiston, she didn’t take Sal.
Sal recognizes she and her parents used to be more openly affectionate—it seems likely that Momma’s departure is what changed things between Sal and Dad. While Sal frames her memory of snuggling in bed with Momma as positive, the fact that Momma wanted to float away (with Sal but without Dad) suggests that she was somewhat unhappy.
Themes
Ben touches Phoebe’s arm, making her jump. He laughs, but this bothers Sal too. Phoebe’s family seems so stiff—is Sal becoming like them? She’s watched Phoebe and Prudence shrink away from Mrs. Winterbottom’s attempts to touch them, and she wonders if she withdrew from Momma, too. Maybe that’s why Momma left.
Sal wants to be a true Hiddle: fun-loving, open, and comfortable with physical contact. She compares how she acts these days to how Phoebe and the Winterbottoms act, which suggests that Sal’s new experiences and relationships are helping her become more self-aware. Sal also wonders if she pulled away from Momma, and if that’s what caused Momma to leave—she seems to be trying to blame herself.
Themes
At Phoebe’s driveway, Ben excuses himself. But just then, Margaret pulls up in her yellow Volkswagen and starts pulling bags out of the car. Phoebe tells Ben that she’s Mrs. Cadaver, and Ben offers to help with the groceries. Phoebe hisses to Ben to not go inside, but he ignores her. Sal declines Mrs. Cadaver’s invitation to come in and follows Phoebe to her front door.
Ben doesn’t seem to judge people nearly as harshly as Phoebe does. While Phoebe sees a “creepy,” dangerous woman, Ben simply sees someone in need of assistance. Sal strikes a middle ground: she doesn’t want to get close to Margaret, but she also doesn’t seem to believe that Margaret is evil.
Themes
The girls look back and see Ben picking up a shiny new axe. Mrs. Winterbottom greets the girls at the door and asks who Ben is and where Mary Lou is, but Phoebe brushes her off. Phoebe gives her mother the latest message, which seems to worry Mrs. Winterbottom. Phoebe doesn’t mention the lunatic at the drugstore, and later, the girls watch Ben leave Mrs. Cadaver’s house in one piece.
Just as Mrs. Winterbottom is starting to keep secrets from her husband, Phoebe is starting to keep secrets from her mother. In some ways, Phoebe is pushing Mrs. Winterbottom away, especially when she doesn’t answer Mrs. Winterbottom’s questions or reveal that they saw the lunatic at the drugstore.
Themes
When Sal gets home later, she finds Dad messing with his car’s engine. She asks if a person is getting too stiff if they flinch when someone tries to touch them. Dad turns around slowly. His eyes are puffy, like he’s been crying. Sal doesn’t flinch when he hugs her.
Witnessing Phoebe’s cold treatment of Mrs. Winterbottom seems to have spurred Sal to reach out to Dad. Sal and Dad are both recovering from the trauma of Momma leaving them—they are, in this sense, the only two people who can fully understand how the other feels. Connecting with each other, as they do here, could help them heal their relationship and their shared grief.
Themes
