Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Individual
Group Discount
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews December 6, 2023 November 29, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan - Group Discount
Qty: 00
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Multiple times in There There, indigenous people abuse substances for reasons that arise from historical trauma rather than innate difference. It is not that Native Americans have a special fondness for alcohol, Harvey explains at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Instead, because alcohol is easy to buy and inexpensive, it offers a quick way to escape temporarily from an unjust world. If society treats one group unjustly, they are more likely to seek escape through substance abuse. Many characters, like Jacquie Red Feather, among others, use alcohol to manage depression, grief, frustration, or suppressed rage. But other forms of addiction also appear in There There. Edwin Black is addicted to food while Charles Johnson is dependent on drugs, as are several other characters. Still, the novel is clear that the root cause is not racial difference. It is, instead, the result of centuries of genocide, dislocation, and dispossession.
Families are unstable across There There, adding to the novel’s representation of an uprooted and devastated people. Domestic violence is not solely to blame for this instability but is one of the novel’s recurrent motifs, another expression of the trauma associated with the “domestic” violence directed against the Native population first by European settlers and then by the U.S. government. Tommy Orange relies on the double meaning of domestic, something linked to the family or house and policies inside the nation, to show that Native women have long suffered at the hands of men. The colonizers’ greed, the cause of territorial dispossession, echoes in the violence meted out by abusive husbands. This is a persistent motif across the novel, but Blue’s first chapter especially highlights domestic violence. All women are vulnerable, but Native women are especially vulnerable because they must fear all men, white and Native alike. Domestic violence is one important way that trauma from the past continues to influence Native communities and families.
From the title, which refers to a Radiohead song, to the final section, when drumming masks gunfire at the powwow, There There centers music. Characters listen to or perform music to express their individuality, explore their heritage, and escape from reality’s grim grind. The three Red Feather boys, for example, have widely divergent tastes. Orvil prefers “powwow music,” particularly the power of the drums. Loother listens exclusively to three rap artists, writing songs of his own to share with his brothers. Lony prefers Beethoven’s symphonies. Here, as elsewhere in the novel, the range of musical styles participates in the book’s committed representation of Native identity as multiple, complex, and nuanced. Still, particularly when combined with dance, music is one of the key ways characters engage with Native cultures. As Thomas Frank notes shortly before the powwow ends in violence, singing and drumming create “that full, that complete feeling” of belonging, of being in the right place.
Please wait while we process your payment