Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in What the Eyes Don’t See, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism and Environmental Injustice
Truth vs. Corruption
Community Values and Collective Duty
The American Dream
Family, Tradition, and Strength
Summary
Analysis
In October of 2016, Nakala came back to the clinic for her 18-moth check-up. She was now a healthy, chubby, happy toddler. Mona apologized to Nakala’s mother, Grace, for giving her bad advice about the tap water a year earlier. Grace had been using bottled water to fix all of her children’s food and formula for over a year. At the end of the check-up, Grace asked Mona if Nakala and her sister Reeva were going to be all right. Mona couldn’t blame Grace for worrying. She knew that the whole community of Flint was reckoning with city-wide PTSD from the neglect, trauma, and uncertainty they’d been living with since the onset of the crisis (and, for many, much longer).
By circling back to the story of Grace, Reeva, and Nakala—three Flint residents affected by the water crisis—the book illustrates Mona’s investment in her patients’ long-term health, both physical and psychological. Mona recognized the toll the water crisis was taking on the families she saw every day—and she was determined to make sure they felt seen and supported in the long aftermath of the crisis.
Themes
The American Dream, Mona writes, worked for her and her family: they fled oppression in a foreign country and found safety and prosperity in the United States. But there are two Americas, and Mona still glimpses the second one in her clinic each and every day. Life is a struggle from the very beginning for babies like Nakala—and, for many people battling institutional racism and environmental injustice, the American Dream is out of reach.
All Mona could do for Grace was to prescribe hope. She urged Grace to continue reading, talking, and singing to her children, feeding them tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, and taking care of her own mental health so that she could better support her children. Mona advised Grace that the badness Reeva and Nakala had been unfairly exposed to could still be overcome by goodness.
Even though the people of Flint have suffered a great deal, this passage underscores Mona’s belief in the power of hope to heal many wounds. Reeva and Nakala—and countless children like them—faced a difficult start in life. But together, the people of Flint brought the truth to light—and committed to an ongoing investment in making Flint a better place for children just like Reeva and Nakala.
Themes
