Themes

I think the theme in these stories is family and relationships. All of the main characters in the stories seem to have parents that either have never truly bonded or related to them or have betrayed them at some point in their lives. In "The Life You Save May Be Your Own", the mother didn't seem to really know her daughter. Whenever Mr. Shiftlet came around, she was all to eager to have her daughter marry him. In addition, I think that the mother betrayed her daughter at the end because she had her marry a man that she did not know very well. In "Rules of the Game", Waverly's mother did not really understand her feelings. Her mother did not understand chess, and always expected her to do better. She also betrayed her daughter by constantly showing her off. Though the mother did not know it, this hurt her daughter because she was embarrassed. In "The Book of the Dead", it is obvious that Annie has a very close relationship with her father. She looks up to him and is inspired. However, her father has been telling her a lie for her whole life. She ends up not having the true, close bond with her father that she thought she had. In "Teenage Wasteland", obviously Donny did not get along with his parents. They did not seem to understand him at all, nor did they seem to know much about them. All of the stories deal with parents and their children. In all of the stories, the parents made some sort of mistake while dealing with their children. I think that this shows that the children are not always at fault, though I believe that Donny was. Each of the children have something that happens in the story to make them upset with their parents.