Grief and Mourning
Woodson is primarily known as a writer of fiction for young audiences, but the heavy themes of this book may well be too large a load for that audience to handle. Whether this story might have begun as a kernel for a story directed toward a YA audience may never be fully known, but it is clear enough that somewhere along the pathway of origination, Woodson realized the emphasis on death, loss, grief, mourning and all emotional baggage contained therein was much more suitable for a readership at least partially steeped in the experience. The specifics of this overarching is primarily devoted to the processes of trying to escape all that darkness. The quest of August for much of the narrative is not so much about dealing with grief through the unpleasantness of mourning, but finding ways to try escaping grief altogether by substituting it with something less painful.
Memory
The main obstruction to successfully running away from such a powerful emotional response as grief is memory. Grief is an emotional response, after all, and with enough focus and willpower, any emotion can be escaped at least temporarily, but memories are something else entirely. August discovers that no matter the effort, memory is not controllable. The best one can do—and August puts great effort into doing this—is to try to wrest what control over the processing of memory one can by manipulating one’s emotional responses to memories. The novel pursues the theme of memory by suggesting that while one has little control over what they can and can’t remember and when they will and won’t be forced to deal with certain memories, they can dull the emotional impact.
Sexuality
Sexuality is explored thematically through various means and from an assortment of angles. Sex is primarily cast as a predatory animal constantly on the lookout for prey in the form of older men and younger boys both focusing their desires upon the objects that just so happen to be young females. The necessity for bonding as a group both to learn how to deal with such predatory advances and for protection against it is the very thing which leads to another avenue of exploration for this theme when an innocent sleepover transforms into same-sex experimentation that results in consequences which are placed in direct opposition to the predatory nature objectified heterosexuality.
