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
Now, Sal and Dad are back living in Bybanks. Gramps lives with them, and Gram is buried where she and Gramps were married. These days, Sal wonders if there’s something more hidden behind the fireplace. Just like the fireplace was behind the plaster wall, and Momma’s story hid behind Phoebe’s, Sal thinks there’s a third story underneath those two. That one is about Gram and Gramps.
Now that Sal and Dad have both found closure after Momma’s death, they can return home without feeling like she’s “haunting” the farm. And Sal now realizes that any given story has more stories nested within it. By telling Phoebe’s story to her grandparents on their road trip, she also gained more insight about Momma’s final days and learned the story of her grandparents’ romance along the way.
Themes
The day after Gram’s funeral, Gloria came to visit Gramps. The two sat on the porch, and Gramps talked about Gram for hours. Gloria eventually said she had a headache—and she hasn’t been back. Sal also wrote to Tom Fleet, telling him about Gram. He wrote back offering his condolences and asking to visit the aspen grove.
It seems like perhaps Gram was right about Gloria—she still seems interested in Gramps. But even if Gram was right, Gramps is still in love with and grieving Gram—he isn’t ready to move on. Sal’s friendship with Tom Fleet is yet another testament to the idea that there is often more to a person than meets the eye. Whereas Sal and her grandparents initially thought that Tom posed a threat to them, here he proves himself to be a caring and loyal friend.
Themes
Gramps is still giving Sal driving lessons. They drive around with Gramps’s new beagle puppy, Huzza Huzza, and they play the “moccasin game.” In it, they pretend to walk in someone’s shoes. They made the game up on the way home from Lewiston, and it’s helped Sal discover some new things. Now, Sal knows the trip with her grandparents was a gift from them. It was a chance for her to walk in Momma’s moccasins and follow her last trip. Sal also knows now that Dad didn’t take her to Lewiston when he learned of Momma’s death for many reasons. He just didn’t understand at the time that Sal would need to see Lewiston for herself. But he was right that they don’t need to bring Momma back to Bybanks—Momma is in all the trees and fields.
Naming his beagle puppy Huzza Huzza is a nod to Gram’s habit of saying “huzza, huzza,” just as the chicken Blackberry is a nod to Momma. It’s possible to honor deceased loved ones, the novel shows, by keeping the things or phrases they loved alive. The moccasin game, meanwhile, takes the novel’s title a step further. Now that Sal understands the importance of “walking two moons” in another person’s moccasins (trying to see things from others’ perspectives), she makes a point to do so—and this makes her a more empathetic person. In turn, Sal’s empathy has helped her repair her relationship with Dad and understand why he behaved the way he did after Momma died.
Themes
One afternoon, after Sal tells Gramps about Prometheus and Pandora, Gramps explains that myths emerge so that people can explain things they don’t understand—such as why there’s evil in the world. Remembering Phoebe and the lunatic, Sal says that if she were in Phoebe’s position, she’d have to believe in a lunatic to believe that her mother disappeared. Sal now knows that Phoebe’s family helped her think about Momma. Phoebe’s stories weren’t true, but Sal knows she herself engaged in some of the same exercises in order to ignore that Momma was gone.
Stories, Gramps and Sal propose, are a way to think about frightening things without having to actually confront them. People can tell themselves stories that make things seem more manageable or understandable—like the Native American and ancient Greek myths Sal learned throughout the novel, and like Phoebe and Sal’s own stories about their mothers. But in the end, Sal realizes, it’s essential to confront the truth. Sal had to accept that Momma was dead and stop telling herself stories in order to come to terms with her trauma.
Themes
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Sal doesn’t think people can explain all the terrible things in the world they can’t fix, so to cope, they fixate on the awful things in their own lives. Eventually, it becomes clear that things aren’t as bad as they seem. Sal has decided that being brave means looking into Pandora’s box, and then looking at the box with “the smoothbeautiful folds” in it.
Here, Sal proposes that bravery means accepting that the world contains both terrible and beautiful things, the way she previously imagined beautiful things buried beneath terrible things (and vice versa) in Pandora’s box. It’s impossible to make the world all good or all bad—they exist in balance with each other.
Themes
Momma’s postcards and her hair are still hidden in Sal’s bedroom, under the floorboards. Sal reread the postcards when she and Dad came home, and she discovered that she, Gram, and Gramps saw every sight Momma did. These days, as Sal drives Gramps around, she tells him Momma’s stories about reincarnation. He especially likes a Navajo story about Estenatlehi, who grows from a baby to an old woman and then turns into a baby again.
Sal and Gramps’s mutual interest in reincarnation myths suggests that storytelling is a way to connect to loved ones who’ve died. Though Momma and Gram can’t return as babies, the Estenatlehi story suggests that people never truly die—their memories are, in a sense, continuously reborn as their stories are passed on to future generations.
Themes
Sal still climbs the sugar maple, where she goes there to think. Yesterday, in the sugar maple tree, Sal discovered that she’s jealous of three things. First, she’s jealous of whomever Ben wrote about in his journal. Then, she’s jealous that Momma wanted more children. It makes Sal feel like she wasn’t enough—though Sal wonders if Momma wanted more children because she wanted more Sals. Finally, Sal is jealous that Mrs. Winterbottom came home when Momma didn’t. Sal still misses Momma.
It's a mark of Sal’s growing maturity that she’s able to identify these jealous feelings. Notably, all of Sal’s jealousies stem from not being someone’s one and only—Ben’s only crush or Momma’s only child. Sal’s ability to recognize this signals that she’s now better able to think critically about herself and others.
Themes
Ben and Phoebe write to Sal regularly—Ben even sent Sal a valentine in October. Ben, Phoebe, Mrs. Cadaver, and Mrs. Partridge are all coming to visit Sal and Dad next month. Mr. Birkway might come too. Sal and Dad are excited to see them—Sal can’t wait to show Phoebe and Ben all the things she loves. She hopes she and Ben can kiss. But for now, everything is well.
Now, Sal is oriented toward the future rather than feeling stuck in the past. Having come to terms with Momma’s death, Sal now sees the importance of accepting life for what it is and appreciating the people she has rather than staying mired in grief and judgment of others. She still misses Momma, but she’s also looking forward to spending time with her friends and continuing her relationship with Ben. Including Mrs. Cadaver in this list of friends shows how completely Sal has changed her thinking, as she now recognizes that people are complex—they aren’t all good or all bad, as Sal and Phoebe initially assumed. By ending on this note, the novel drives home the importance of its titular saying: “Don't judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins.” By putting herself in other people’s shoes, Sal has a deeper and more nuanced understanding of herself and those around her, which has allowed her to form mature relationships that she deeply values.
Themes
