Previous
Chapter 19
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
Opal Viola goes through a box of things she’s kept and finds a flyer for the Friendship Center. She had forgotten the place existed and decides to go immediately. The first time she goes, she meets a retired social worker named Frank Blanket, who gives her his card. The second time, she meets a woman named Maxine, who says she was friends with her mother, Victoria, and knew Opal when she was little. Maxine says she has something for Opal and gives Opal the box that Victoria left with her.
Up to this point, the novel has shown how Lony, Loother, and Orvil have felt disconnected from Native culture despite their interest in it and Opal Viola’s attempts to provide avenues for them to pursue that interest. Charles’s manuscript, which is in the box that Maxine has, seems like it could be a missing piece to the puzzle that will help their whole family better understand their history, signaling again the novel’s view of the importance of historical records to counter attempts of cultural erasure.
Themes
Later, Opal Viola goes to get pizza with Lony. She thinks that Lony hasn’t been acting like himself recently. On the way there, she wonders if anyone ever told Orvil that Jacquie is the one who saved him by dragging him off the baseball field after he was shot. Getting pizza, Opal asks Lony if he thinks Orvil is okay. Lony says he thinks either Orvil is bulletproof, or he (Lony) has a superpower that saved Orvil. Lony says “make-believe can make life into whatever you want it to be.”
Themes
