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The Drome is my mom and why she drank, it’s the way history lands on a face . . .
There There explores how past traumas have a cyclical effect that impacts people in the present. In Tony’s case, his mother’s alcoholism, a symptom of her own pain and of the Native people’s communal pain, has left its mark on Tony in the form of fetal alcohol syndrome. The Drome is not only a consequence of his mother’s individual addiction or poor choices—it is a consequence of centuries of trauma and violence inflicted on Natives.
It was something about how life will break you. How that’s the reason we’re here, and to go sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples fall and pile around you, wasting all that sweetness.
Many of the characters in There There struggle to find happiness and purpose in life due to the systemic barriers facing their community. Tony reflects on a passage from a Louise Erdrich novel that states that life consists of knowing that sweetness abounds, but not being able to taste any of that sweetness. As he grows into adulthood, Tony increasingly relates to the wisdom of this passage. Opportunities for success and contentment slip out of grasp because the system is set up to disadvantage Native Americans.
He gets lost in the story he works out for them. It’s always the same. There is a battle, then a betrayal, then a sacrifice. The good guys end up winning, but one of them dies.
Chapters from Tony’s point of view bookend the novel. At the start of There There, Tony states that the sweetness of life evades him. He struggles with fetal alcohol syndrome and has turned to drug dealing to make money. At the end of the novel, as Tony faces his death, he feels a strong sense of purpose and connection to the world. The narrative of his life has ended in heroism, just like the Transformers movies he used to love. Although he is dying, he has found the sweetness that had been missing from his existence.
