Rescue

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 17

Chapters 18-34

Chapters 35-51

Chapters 52-65

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Codes

Codes are one of the main motifs in Rescue, as the young protagonist wants to become “a cryptologist in London, creating and deciphering codes to help with the war effort” (36). Indeed, the plot of the novel revolves around Meg’s love of codes, which symbolizes her connection with her father and fits into the larger context of WWII resistance efforts. Narratively speaking, the coded messages included in the story also provide opportunities for misdirection and plot twists, which creates intrigue and suspense.

At the beginning of the book, Meg states:

For most of my life, Papa and I had shared a love of codes. Our game was to create something the other could not decipher. Neither of us yet had lost the game.

The day he left for the war, Papa had given me a tall jar of folded papers, each one with a different code. He believed he’d made enough papers for me to solve one code each week until he came home (35).

Harper’s codes are a way for him and his daughter to stay connected despite his absence, and Meg uses her father’s jar of codes to count down the days until his return. However, once she meets Captain Stewart and is invested in a mission to save her father, Meg’s love of codes takes on a more significant weight. They become a necessary tool for her survival and come to represent her father’s guidance to overcome dangerous obstacles. Indeed, Meg is given a note from Harper that contains vital information to find him. Throughout the book, Meg slowly decrypts each one of the codes the letter contains, and each piece of information enables her to face a particular challenge in her journey. For instance, Harper tells her that Liesel is a traitor, which leads Meg to confront her, but only after she mistakenly interprets the message as a warning against Albert, thus adding narrative tension.

Toward the end, the young girl finally solves the code that she has been struggling to decipher throughout the story: “It was the one message [my father] would have most wanted me to know after he went to war[…]: [JE T’AIME DAISY]” (270). When she is finally reunited with Harper, his and Meg’s roles are symbolically reversed when she gives him a code that he is unable to decrypt.

Captain Stewart’s Backpack

Just like Harper’s note, Captain Stewart’s Backpack contains key items that guide Meg’s journey through hostile territory and help her overcome obstacles. The backpack thus symbolizes her physical journey as well as her emotional growth through the challenges she faces.

Captain Stewart is a British spy and saboteur who belongs to the Special Operations Executive and has been tasked with helping Albert, Liesel, and Jakob escape Nazi-occupied France in exchange for information about Harper Kenyon’s location. He describes the SOE’s mission as being “professional troublemakers. The more trouble, the better. Some call us the League of Ungentlemanly Behavior, but in the end, we’re a group of misfits who lack the good sense to conduct this war properly. Our task is to do everything the regular military cannot do” (55-56).

When Meg first gets the backpack, she is confused about its mismatched contents and states “Nothing else in here [beyond a map, camera, and flashlight] was of much use to anyone, and certainly not to a spy” (89-90).

Meg’s disappointment suggests that she is still naïve about the role of a spy at this point in the story. However, throughout the story, she learns to use those items by relying on Captain Stewart’s spy training manual as well as her own experience. By the story’s end, Meg has become much more confident and skilled. This is also suggested by the fact that, at first, she finds the bag heavy but pretends to carry it with ease so as not to attract attention. However, at the end, she states: “I lifted Captain Stewart’s bag onto my shoulders, realizing for the first time how much lighter it had become. No, I began to realize how much stronger I had become—that was the difference” (221). Meg’s new physical strength reflects her emotional growth as she gradually becomes confident enough to shoulder the responsibility of her role.

Middle Places

The motif of Middle Places is developed in two main passages in the book. First, Meg explains that leaving her home to help the Durands reach safety is her first open act of resistance against the Nazis: “Maman once told me that surviving in an occupied country meant we had to learn how to live in the middle” (86). Jakob later echoes this metaphor when he tells her about the Durands’ decision to resist the Nazi regime:

‘I was taught that everyone has three choices in life. To be part of the good, part of the evil, or to try standing in the middle. But I don’t think that’s true anymore. There is no middle. Those who refuse to choose one side or the other only get in the way of those who are doing good, and in that way, end up helping those who wish to do evil.’

‘So you left Germany because you could not be part of the evil?’

‘No, Meg,’ Albert said. ‘We left because the middle became the evil’ (97).

In doing so, the narrative suggests that one of the main Moral Challenges of Resistance Efforts is to leave the comfortable middle ground, which only enables evil to continue unimpeded, and take action against oppression. Although Liesel comments that “there are no good choices in war” (288), Meg, Jakob, Pierre, and the other members of the resistance depicted in Rescue have all chosen to leave the middle and fight the Nazis’ rule, despite the danger of doing so.