Motherhood and self-sacrifice
The mother in this novel is tasked with the impossible situation of doing the best for her family that she can when circumstances are lined up against her. Try as she might, she cannot seem to find the stability and order that it would take her to provide a future for them. In the end, she feels like a failure, because her best strategies lead to abysmal consequences. Although she feels this is her fault, the book is thematically portraying her as a martyr and a self-sacrifice for her children.
War and community
The problems of her situation stem at least in part from the way that warfare has riddled her community and family with brokenness and change. She struggles to find a community who can support her because the whole nation is left damaged by the draft and the deaths of young men. The war also changes the economic reality of her situation so that relocating becomes a tricky business. The chaos of life in any location is considerable, but especially, it seems, during wartime.
Hope and faith
Gertie's hope in the future is symbolized by her religious beliefs about God, her intricate understanding of the Bible, and her prayer life. She prays to God for deliverance, but again and again, fate brings her to suffering instead. The Bible discusses these things in extensive detail, and she knows the right answers from a religious point of view, but in a powerfully thematic way, her personal suffering makes faith and hope feel impossible. She struggles with feelings of anger and hatred toward herself and God. The novel viewed from the outside has the added benefit of empathy and forgiveness; the reader sees that it is not her fault, and that she is simply a martyr of the human experience.
