The Shape of Thunder

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-8

Chapters 9-16

Chapters 17-24

Chapters 25-32

Chapters 33-38

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Grief and Guilt After the Loss of A Sibling

Through Cora and Quinn’s grief and guilt at the loss of Mabel and Parker, respectively, Jasmine Warga explores the devastation of losing a sibling. Cora’s grief often seems unmanageable in its intensity. The grief is isolating as well as overwhelming. Cora thinks, “[M]y missing sometimes makes me feel like the loneliest person in the world” (207). Quinn observes Cora’s grief when they meet in the woods for the first time and Cora is overcome by tears when they speak of Mabel.

Quinn’s familiarity with Cora’s tears illustrates her own grief at losing Parker. In numerous letters to her brother, Quinn remembers Parker’s frequent kindness through their childhood. At the beach when Quinn was scared of the waves, she remembers Parker in a positive light: “You were so patient with me” and “you held my hand and stayed with me. You showed me how to not be afraid of the water” (129). Her longing for her brother is evident in these letters. In another letter to Parker, Quinn tells him, “[Y]ou’re never going to know how much I loved you” (327). Quinn’s grief is complicated through feelings of guilt at the way Parker died. She reflects that she saw Parker opening their father’s gun safe but did not intervene. His actions left Quinn isolated and confused in the wake of his death. Quinn also admits in her letter to Parker, “[Y]ou’re never going to know how much I hate you” (327). The duality of Quinn’s overwhelming feelings of love and hatred for her brother are confusing and isolating. Quinn’s guilt at failing to intervene in, “the moment [she] could have stopped [her] brother,” causes her to punish herself, such as by quitting soccer, a sport which she adores (193). Quinn’s guilt makes her feel that she deserves to remain stuck in her grief to punish herself for Parker’s actions and for her inaction. She does not believe that she deserves the relief of talking to a professional because “the professionals are only for kids like Cora. For kids that deserve help” (244). Quinn even denies herself the relief of crying as a means of punishing herself, as she writes to Parker, “every time I think about you and what you did, I want to cry, but I try not to let myself. The pain goes away a little when I cry. And I know I deserve to feel the hurt” (245).

Cora, too, struggles with guilt. Although, unlike Quinn, she feels survivor’s guilt for being “the only Hamed girl,” rather than feeling guilty for the nature of Mabel’s death (293). This guilt causes her to resist the relief of reconnecting with her best friend Quinn for almost a year and to feel guilty when she does. Cora does not feel that she is entitled to enjoy her life when Mabel was denied the chance to live. This is illustrated in her immediate feelings of shame and guilt when she catches herself enjoying the Fall Fair. Cora’s survivor’s guilt also places pressure on her to manage her father’s and Grams’s feelings.

The immense pressure that Cora feels to manage her father and grandmother’s grief is evident. Quinn also struggles to manage the pressure of her parent’s grief in the wake of her brother’s death. She believes that “now [she] feel[s] like [she has] to do everything right” (60). The girls’ guilt at being alive when their siblings are dead causes them to feel responsible for mitigating their parents’ distress.

Healing Through Human Connection and Hope

Jasmine Warga suggests that hope and human connection are vital in beginning to heal from immense grief. Cora and Quinn manage to cope with their grief for their respective siblings’ deaths for a time by focusing on the possibility of undoing the events that led to both Mabel and Parker’s deaths through time travel. Although Quinn and Cora’s plan to time travel ultimately won’t work, it brings each girl solace through hope. In a moment of trauma and distress, during the lockdown drill, Quinn sees “a halo of light on the floor of the library” that she believes must be “a wormhole” (124). This fantasy illustrates that Quinn manages her anger, grief, and isolation through daydreaming about undoing Parker’s actions. The fantastical notion that Quinn can change what happens helps her to deal with the feelings of grief and guilt that her brother’s crime brings up in her. It gives her a sense of hope that her pain might be temporary.

Similarly, Cora’s grief for Mabel recedes when she resolves that she will be able to see her again through time travel. Cora’s father, when he learns of the failed time-travel plan, does not condemn his daughter’s false hope. Instead, he explains that the plans “work, even if they don’t actually, well, you know, work,” because they provide solace through hope (322). He explains that Cora’s method of coping can be viewed as “an imperfect and evolving theory. It’s always something you’re going to have to puzzle over” (322). Warga highlights that even false hope can be a positive force which allows healing to take place.

The time travel plan also allows each girl to hope that their parents’ grief can be mitigated. Quinn sees her mother crying and quietly vows, through discovering a wormhole, “I’m going to make things better” (104). Similarly, Cora observes her father’s and Grams’s grief and reflects that “time travel” would “make everything okay again” (293).

Cora and Quinn’s plan to find a wormhole also provides human connection through their renewed friendship. This is illustrated in the fact that looking at the old photos with Cora doesn’t feel as painful for Quinn after she has concocted the plan to time travel and change the outcome of Parker’s actions. Quinn no longer feels isolated in her grief for Parker when Cora includes a desire to save Parker in their time-travel experiment. Cora restructures her research question to “whether or not [they] can travel back in time to prevent Parker from hurting everyone, including himself” (144). Quinn is shocked and touched that Cora changes her focus to include saving Parker’s life. This emphasizes the way that human connection can allow individuals solace from immense grief. Similarly for Cora, their renewed friendship brings immense relief: “Before I realize what I’m doing, I’ve walked over to Quinn. I hug her tightly. My eyes are blurry with tears. ‘And I’ve missed you so much, too’” (256).

After the failed time travel experimentation, Quinn concludes that they did find magic together, just not the magic they expected: “not the wormhole, but another kind of magic. Cora and me. Me and Cora. Coraandme” (349). The girls’ connection helps them to process through their respective traumas, as is illustrated in the symbolic moment on the anniversary of the shooting where Cora plants the seeds for Mabel’s violets at the same site where Quinn buries her letter to Parker under the oak tree in the woods. This act signifies a commitment from the girls to continue their friendship and process through their respective traumas together.

Violence Motivated by Racism

Jasmine Warga explores the role of racism in motivating acts of violence through Parker’s murderous shooting rampage at the high school. The racial agenda behind his crimes is suggested in the fact that Parker “was active on all these forums full of people who hated women and immigrants and Muslims,” according to Cora (159-60). Parker’s racism is also implied in Quinn’s comment to Cora that Parker “would say awful things at dinner sometimes” (156). Cora is ashamed of Parker’s comments and will not elaborate, but it is implied that Parker touted sexist and racist ideology. Warga illustrates the role the internet can play in radicalizing angry and confused young people.

Warga explores the challenging position Parker’s parents were in. They try to discipline Parker for expressing offensive opinions: “[W]hen he kept saying the things, they grounded him, but he didn’t seem to care. He never wanted to go anywhere but his room anyway. Eventually, they stopped arguing with him. And stopped grounding him” (156). The failure of these disciplinarian techniques reveals Warga’s opinion that anger and retribution does not solve complex interpersonal issues. Quinn explains to Cora that “[i]t’s like they got scared of Parker” (156). Parker’s parents were aware, at least to an extent, of his existential anger and his increasingly radicalized belief systems, but they felt fearful of this transformation and had no idea how to talk to their son. After Parker’s death, Quinn’s family is still reluctant to have difficult conversations about challenging topics. Warga suggests that Parker’s hateful belief systems and violent schemes may have been able to be diffused through a willingness to have challenging conversations about complex issues and that this may have curbed Parker’s radicalization more successfully than grounding him.

Warga connects larger, violent acts of racial hatred with the representation of minorities in the media. Like gun violence, it is cast as a societal problem, rather than the downfall of a single individual. Warga inserts her critiques of societal racism through the voice of Cora. Cora criticizes the coverage of shootings committed by children in the media and through this problematic coverage, how the media represents youth of color as inherently criminally inclined, whereas an agenda needs to be found to account for the shock of a white youth committing a criminal act. Warga proposes that racism, and hatred in general, can start small and grow into dangerous and devastating forces, especially if these beliefs are also evident in society at large.