The Marrow Thieves

What is the pupose/moral of the marrow theives?

What is the pupose/moral of the marrow theives?

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Cherie Dimaline penned the book The Marrow Thieves, and Cormorant Books Inc. released it on April 15th, 2017. This narrative is set in a dystopian future in Canada, where most people have lost the ability to dream and indigenous romantics are forced to run away from their daily lives. The evil government is on the lookout for a dreamer who will remove the marrow and cure the rest of the populace, which has lost the ability to dream. Donating marrow requires killing unwilling subjects. Frenchie, the protagonist and a boy of fifteen, and his companions try to evade the Recruiters by fleeing to the north (Brock). The Recruiters looked to the past practice of constructing residential schools as a blueprint for their current endeavor. After capturing the native students, they used them for their marrow. The story is mostly structured around dreams that examine the theme of foresight, suggesting that only the optimistic would succeed in the long run. Cherie Dimaline shows the importance of dreaming by using a group of indigenous people and pictures of some well-known people who are not indigenous.

In this post, I want to talk about how you can fix the issue of being unable to dream while you're under oppression and facing limitations. The author of The Marrow Thieves will explain the significance of dreaming by delving deeply into the book's recurring themes of love, history, and hope. Here, we'll employ a technique called thematic analysis to identify the story's central themes and build an argument for how optimistic ideals and romantic feelings can shape an individual's life. The essay has various sections under which the story's core features are broken down into smaller pieces to prove the aforementioned notions and show that The Marrow Thieves is a complex tale that may also have contemporary relevance.


Hope
Dreams are significant to the indigenous society since they provide hope to continue alive. The indigenous are the last remaining visionaries at a time of crisis and suicide, and their marrow is in high demand across the globe. They can only keep going because they have hope, and their aspirations are the only thing keeping them going. The indigenous people now have a special insight into the future thanks to their dreams. Frenchie spends the first chapter of the story describing the terrifying dreams he's had over the previous several weeks. He spoke about how he was going to force himself to create a new mental image of Mitch and his parents. He described the physical characteristics of every member of the family. His mother, for one, has learned to approach Frenchie's tent with her lips sealed and her left arm firmly in the sling.

When Frenchie's father saw him coming, he leaped into the fireplace where he had been sipping from a mason jar (Dimaline 42).

Frenchie's dreams provide insight into his feelings toward his loved ones and his community. Both her mouth and one of her arms have been cut off for him. Despite the fact that it has been years since she has seen Frenchie, she is eager to continue her search for him. Frenchie's mother's deed of locating him exemplifies the power of hope to propel people through adversity. There is good news in this dream for Frenchie and all of the indigenous peoples. In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Dimaline talks about the hope that permeates her novel. Her grandparents endured residential schools and tales, but they held on to their language and rituals in the hopes of keeping their culture alive. As a result, her insistence on seeing dreams as normative examples demonstrates that people do have hope (Henley.). As a result, aspiration and optimism play vital roles in propelling individuals to achieve their goals.

History
In addition, the indigenous community in The Marrow Thieves are able to better plan for its survival because of the insights provided by its members' dreams. While dreaming, Frenchie witnessed his mother's lips being stitched shut (Damaline 42). The dream symbolized the fact that individuals have been permanently deprived of their right to free speech and their ability to influence events. Throughout the novel, we see how civilization accepts without protest the kidnapping and eventual slaughter of indigenous people for their bone marrow (Briggs). Due to her untimely demise, Minerva, the keeper of native tongues and cultural traditions, has been rendered speechless. Given his family's past, Frenchie has every reason to avoid losing his own voice and instead concentrate his attention on the path to survival. The novel's protagonist and his people spend the whole book on the run. At the story's climax, Frenchie pauses because he has a dream that the end of the world is nigh and resurrection will begin. Because what he bears cannot be silenced as fast as his mother was, Frenchie chooses to fight.

Ideas
Important for the indigenous people's survival as they engage with nature, dreams provide insight into potential survival strategies. Frenchie has had recurring dreams about moose. As he puts it, "in a sense, I got that moose," which is not the case (Dimaline 52). In both of Frenchie's elk-related dreams, the moose was nowhere in sight. He had hoped to make moose friends but was unsuccessful. The moose he saw in his dream represented the common misconception that indigenous people are inseparable from the natural world (Briggs). Frenchie could have gotten the moose and interacted with it if the indigenous people were as connected to nature as they believed they were in the dream. This setting exemplified the natural world depicted in the text. Refuting the native population's stereotype was crucial because it influenced Frenchie's view of the natural world. Ultimately, he decided to go with the truth rather than his preconceived notions since that is how genuine people operate. The indigenous people's survival in a hostile culture may be attributed in large part to the fresh ideas they gained via dreaming. Therefore, dreams continued to play an important role in indigenous people's ability to survive because they provided them with vital information.

Love

To sum up, dreams are a significant symbol of the love that drives characters to risk their lives for one another. Frenchie often has nightmares about his brother Mitch, who gave his life to rescue him (Damaline 42). There was no way Mitch could have died alone if it weren't for the love he had for others. Another time Minerva gives her all for the group is when she tells the Recruiters "no" and is subsequently brought to the residential school by herself for marrow harvesting. Frenchie is devastated by the loss of life among his people, but he rationalizes that the sacrifices were necessary. When they were the only dreamers in a town where everyone else turned on them for money, love was all they had left to keep them going. Through a dream, Frenchie learns the value of love in a community and within a family. Since we can't hope to survive alone, love requires us to make sacrifices for the sake of others around us.

Conclusion
As a whole, the author makes consistent use of dreams to stress their significance to humankind. When non-indigenous people were denied the opportunity to dream, it led to despair and even suicide, which was then encouraged by those in authority who were obligated to provide a remedy. It is inevitable that indigenous people would have to always be on the run for their own safety. Indigenous people have a capacity for fantasy that allows them to look forward despite their current difficulties. Dreams give the indigenous people hope, and hope ensures survival, thus the indigenous people will continue to exist. Despite being misled, raped, silenced, and killed, they continue to hold out hope for a better day when hunting is abolished. Their ability to concentrate in their dreams has allowed them to uncover their previously unknown history of vocal suppression. Armed with this information, the survivors battle for a voice by evading capture by government recruiters.

The indigenous people's dreams provide them a boost of survival strategies by helping them confront the harsh realities of nature and put an end to their own myths and misconceptions. Their bone marrow is in high demand, but they are able to stay alive in a world of traitors by mining their dreams for clues. Some of the indigenous people remain until the very end so that they may speak out for the people who gave so much for them, a virtue that was fulfilled via a dream. Therefore, indigenous people rely heavily on dreams as a means of guidance and protection.

Source(s)

Briggs, Moira. “The Significance of Dreams in the Marrow Thieves (Moira Briggs and Sarah McKenzie).” Forever Young: Literature of Adolescents, Web. Brock, Zoë. “The Marrow Thieves Study Guide—Literature Guide.” LitCharts, 2019, Web. Dimaline, Cherie. The Marrow Thieves. Dancing Cat Books, 2017. Henley, James. “The Message YA Novelist Cherie Dimaline Has for Young Indigenous Readers.” CBC, 2017, Web.