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Chapter 15
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Wandering Stars, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonization, Racism, and Institutional Violence
Intergenerational Trauma
Addiction
Survival vs. Resilience
Identity and Cultural Erasure
Summary
Analysis
At Opal Viola’s insistence, Orvil starts going to therapy twice a week after the shooting. His therapist, Dr. Hoffman, explains four trauma responses to Orvil: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. He also makes Orvil do different exercises—like walking meditation and archery—to try and help Orvil cope with his trauma. Orvil also goes to group therapy. Dr. Hoffmann explains that it’s important to hear other people’s stories to know that you’re not alone. Orvil says that to him, it feels “corny.”
Again, Opal Viola seems to be working diligently to try and ensure that Orvil heals after the shooting, and therapy does seem to help Orvil, on some level, even if he finds the group sessions corny. Still, therapy doesn’t seem to be giving Orvil what he’s looking for. The novel highlights, then, the distinction between the instant gratification of things like drugs and the gradual work of potential longer-term solutions like therapy when addressing emotional pain and trauma. The novel suggests that, at this point in Orvil’s life, he gravitates to the clearly perceptible and immediate benefits afforded to him by drugs when compared to the sometimes painstaking and, from Orvil’s perspective, embarrassing work that therapy can entail.
Themes
Orvil recalls waking up in the hospital after he was shot. His brothers, Lony and Loother, were there along with their grandmother Jacquie, who had never been in their lives before. At the powwow, Orvil had initially thought the gunshots were thunder. At first, when he got shot, it didn’t hurt. It just felt like a thud. But then the pain came, and in the hospital, he received what seemed like an unlimited prescription of hydromorphone, the brand name of which is Dilaudid. After the shooting, Orvil was gripped by panic when he tried to sleep, plagued by recurring dreams of the day of the shooting, and he began to feel like he needed the hydromorphone to sleep.
This passage shows again how Orvil gradually falls into addiction. Doctors supply him with a seemingly unlimited prescription of painkillers. Notably, one of the hallmarks of the opioid epidemic has been the over-prescription of highly addictive and potentially lethal painkillers, and Orvil seems to have fallen prey to that same pattern. While using hydromorphone to treat physical pain, Orvil learns that it also helps him cope with emotional pain. The novel shows, then, how large decisions outside of his control and seemingly small decisions on his part combine to propel Orvil into addiction.
Themes
Orvil tells Opal Viola that he doesn’t like school. He doesn’t see the point in going unless he wants to wind up wasting his life behind a desk. Opal Viola says it’s an investment in his future. One night, Opal Viola goes to a Native event at the intertribal center, and Jacquie tells the boys that they’ll have hot dogs for dinner and then play dominoes. Orvil takes three pills that afternoon. While they play dominoes, Orvil feels the four of them all coming closer together. Another day, Orvil takes a pill and then plays Red Dead Redemption 2. While playing, Orvil feels a thirst for revenge aimed at sheriffs and cowboys that seems almost unquenchable and goes on a killing spree against those characters. Doctors plan to wean Orvil off of prescription painkillers soon and start him on over-the-counter pain medication. Orvil isn’t sure what he’ll do when that happens.
Themes
