Walk Two Moons Themes

Walk Two Moons Themes

Identity

Growing up is hard no matter what and figuring out who you are is part of the struggle. Even when you're supposed to be a grown-up, it's hard to feel totally comfortable with your identity. And it'...

Guilt and Blame

We all know it's really easy to blame other people, especially when you don't know their whole story. And even more especially when you are feeling hurt yourself. Walk Two Moons is all about what h...

Family

Walk Two Moons has all sorts of families – strange ones, normal ones, chaotic ones, and at the heart of it all, a broken one. Sal's mother has left, and she and her father are more distant than e...

Change/Abandonment

Change is both horrible and healing in Walk Two Moons. Though Sal doesn't want change (she doesn't want to leave her hometown of Bybanks, she doesn't want to let her mom go, and she certainly doesn...

Love

We see many different definitions of love in Walk Two Moons. There's Sal's love for her mother (which is mixed with anger, too). There's the love between Sal's parents. There's Sal and Ben's new lo...

Fear

The protagonist of Walk Two Moons, Sal, is full of fears, but she doesn't always tell people about them. Instead, she keeps her fears bottled up inside until they're just about to burst. And she's...

Visions of America

Walk Two Moons gives us a vivid portrait of America through Sal's eyes as she goes on a road trip from Euclid, Ohio to Lewiston, Idaho. At times we see aspects and landmarks of America that make us...

Man and the Natural World

Many characters in Walk Two Moons have a lot of awe and respect for Nature. Nature is their means of connecting to their spiritual selves, to something greater than themselves. In this way, nature...

Memory and the Past

In Walk Two Moons, Sal uses her memories in order to hold onto her mother and to make sense of her place in the world. Her memories pop up like bubbles to the surface of a pool, and it is through t...

Death and Mortality

In Walk Two Moons, Sal must learn to cope with death. Her whole life is affected by the death of loved ones. At first, she doesn't understand why people must die, so she tries to find ways to make...