88 pages • 2 hours read
Ann E. BurgAll the Broken Pieces
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Power of Words and Communication
When All the Broken Pieces begins, Matt fears words and the power they possess. He’s afraid to share his memories of Vietnam with his adoptive parents, or even to express his fear that his family might give him away. Although the cruel words of other boys on the baseball team “hit [Matt] / like a punch” (47), he chooses not to fight back with words or tell an authority figure what’s going on. As Matt puts it, “words spill out / like splattered blood […] leaving stains / that won’t come out” (129)—and in an effort to avoid pain and conflict, Matt avoids words as well. However, as the novel continues, Matt learns he must find the courage to use words, to communicate, in order to truly overcome his own pain.
In the early portion of the novel, the author often presents words as a tool of violence, something Matt distrusts and does his best to evade. Matt overhears his father talking about the Vietnam vets who made such great sacrifices, only to return to a home where “people throw things— / tomatoes, / rotten apples, / angry words” (7). While Matt isn’t a soldier, he is also a reminder of Vietnam and the pain it has caused for so many, and as such, he is also the target of violent words. Matt’s teammates use racial slurs to attack him, but most damaging of all is Rob’s accusation, repeated several times throughout the novel: “My brother died / because of you” (48).
When Matt attends Veteran Voices meetings, he encounters violent words of a different kind, ones that bring up painful memories “like an opened fire hydrant / gushing words and tears / instead of water” (126). As Matt hears the soldiers telling stories of their friends dying in their arms and of children with explosives on their backs, he wants to escape from the “words […] spilling / and splattering in every direction” (130). In the face of such horror, words cannot comfort—all the other group members can offer is “silence […] like / a warm blanket / we wrap around” (130) each other.
While Matt sees examples of the destruction and pain words can cause, the author also suggests that words can bring people together and allow them to heal. His mother speaks and sings to him with a soothing voice “like warm honey” (11), telling Matt “You are safe now, you are home” (12). Matt’s father reassures him “you’ll always be our MVP” (51), and Matt’s parents and mentors, particularly Jeff, encourage Matt to talk about his past when he’s ready. Matt begins to see how words can have a positive power as well as a negative one. In a veteran’s meeting, when Jeff speaks about the “faith” and “love” (156) Matt’s biological mother must have possessed in order to send her son to a better life in America, Jeff’s “words rush through” (157) Matt, and he understands for the first time that his mother truly loved him. Then, when Coach Robeson, weak from cancer, tells the baseball team just how much they can learn from their new coach, he uses “thin, wavy, watery words / that mean something / even though he barely / has the power / to say them” (169). Seeing these examples of the strength words can impart and the good they can do, Matt tries his best to stop running from words, even though he isn’t yet sure how to use them himself: “Why can’t I ever say the things / I want to say?” (145).
In fact, it is Matt’s new baseball coach, Coach Williams, who encourages him to say the things he wants—and needs—to say. When Coach Williams forces Matt and Rob to partner for an exercise, and Rob again hits Matt with angry words “like a fastball / in the pit of my stomach” (189), Matt chooses to respond not with silence, but with words of his own. As Matt reveals “I lost my brother too,” his “words / surprise” (191) him, and he goes on to tell the full story of how his biological brother was injured—and his belief that he is to blame—for the first time. Matt discovers that his words have forged a bond between him and Rob, overpowering Rob’s anger, but Matt still has another mission: he must “find / the words again” (202) and tell his parents what happened in Vietnam. Once he’s told them “everything” (205), Matt again finds that words can provide healing and connection, rather than division and violence, as his parents assure him that “nothing, nothing / will ever change” (205) their love for him. Now that he’s found the courage to “let the words lead” him where he didn’t “want to go” (204), Matt has realized his fears of being rejected and sent away were unfounded. With open, honest communication between himself and his adoptive parents, Matt can begin to overcome his past and move forward.
By the end of All the Broken Pieces, Matt has changed his mind about words: while he still believes that “words are messy,” he now understands that “sometimes, / words are all you’ve got / to show what matters most” (211). As a result, Matt speaks up, thanking Coach Robeson for “everything” (211) and sharing memories of a Vietnam that could be beautiful as well as violent. Perhaps most significantly, Matt asks his parents if they can try to find his biological mother and brother, and the novel ends with his now-confident belief that one day he will find his brother. Through the power of communication, Matt has already found himself.
The Damaging Legacy of the Vietnam War
Near the end of All the Broken Pieces, Matt’s father states: “War is a monster with a mind of its own” (205). The novel includes many characters whose lives have been ripped apart by the war, from Matt, who had to leave behind his biological family and homeland, to young men like Jeff and Chris, who gave up promising futures to serve in Vietnam. While all wars are violent and destructive, the author emphasizes the particularly “divisive” (144) nature of the Vietnam War, which leads to veterans being blamed and attacked even after returning to their homeland. For Matt, a child from Vietnam who, as one Vietnam vet says, “reminds everyone / of the place they all want to forget” (189), confronting this war’s legacy also means confronting his own identity.
From the very beginning of All the Broken Pieces, the author illustrates how horrific the Vietnam War was for those who lived through it, either as Vietnamese citizens or as soldiers. In the opening pages of the novel, Matt remembers his homeland as a place of “fear and fog […] smoke and death” (3), a place where he had to leave his family behind to have a chance to, as his mother urged him, “Survive” (4). Even after being adopted by a loving American family, Matt is haunted by these memories of violence, and he sees fear and danger as normal, familiar experiences. If he is “safe,” Matt wonders, in a place without “screams” and “shouting guns,” then “How can I / be home?” (12). As the novel continues, Matt attends Vietnam veteran meetings and discovers he isn’t the only one who can’t shake off his experience of war and violence. The vets recall “wip[ing] the blood and grime off” (127) the faces of their dying comrades, and they can still see the Vietnamese children with explosives tied to their bodies, “dropping like / scarecrows” (130). One vet asks if anyone has found “a way / to turn it off” (127), but no one responds. While the vets—and Matt—may have left the physical experience of war behind, the emotional impact of senseless violence is not so easy to escape.
While living through painful wartime memories is enough of a challenge on its own, the novels’ characters also have to contend with the judgment placed on the Vietnam War—and on those who participated in the conflict. Matt’s father points out that not only are many of the vets physically injured, on crutches or in wheelchairs, but that they have to deal with “people throw[ing] things— / tomatoes, / rotten apples, / angry words” (7). Later, Vietnam vet Jeff Harding takes this idea even further, saying that Americans who weren’t in Vietnam “don’t understand” and call the vets “baby killers” (156). As a result, it’s no surprise that Matt sees these vets not as “soldiers,” but “beat-up” (101), broken men. Matt can relate to these men because he too is the recipient of “angry words” (7), spoken by those who blame Matt for the damage the Vietnam War has caused. Matt’s classmates use racial slurs like “Frog-face” (47) and “Matt-the-rat” (48), and worst of all, one baseball teammate tells Matt “My brother died / because of you” (48). Matt, like the veterans, receives the blame and resentment for a situation he did not create, and that has hurt him as well.
Another particularly damaging aspect of the Vietnam War’s legacy is the way it has targeted young people—both children like Matt and his brother, who was injured by a mine and couldn’t go to America with Matt, and young men who gave up opportunities to fight in the war. Coach Robeson refers to these men as “the real role models” who put off college to fight and “gave up their youth— / and for some, their lives” (144). In fact, some of these young men become role models for Matt in particular, like his music teacher Jeff, who was planning to attend music school in New York before becoming a helicopter medic, and Chris, who was talented enough to play major-league baseball and now uses a wheelchair. Matt’s father says that “the war changed / Chris” (109), not only physically but emotionally as well. Chris's his wife has left him, and he’s lost the chance to pursue his dreams.
Other characters also emphasize that the lasting psychological impact of the war is even more damaging than the physical one—for instance, Coach Robeson compares the war to the cancer he’s been fighting. Coach tells his baseball team, “the war was worse / than this cancer I got. / It destroyed us / from the inside,” and “It’s still spreading its poison” (171). As for stopping this poison, the coach tells his young team, “That’s up to you” (171)—that they can do so by “giv[ing] each other a chance” (173). Throughout the novel, the author suggests that Americans—and particularly the younger generation, boys like Matt and Rob—can overcome the divisions caused by war by accepting vets like their new coach Chris, and accepting each other, despite their differences. Moreover, healing involves acknowledging that vets did some good despite taking part in a less-than-ideal conflict. Jeff tells the other vets that if mothers like Matt’s gave their children to American soldiers, believing the Americans would give them a better life, then “we can’t have been all bad” (156).
Jeff encapsulates the author’s overall message about the Vietnam War when he acknowledges: “We lost a big piece / of ourselves in Vietnam” [but] we did some good too” —and the vets shouldn’t “let anybody tell you / different” (158). Jeff acknowledges all the damage the war caused, while also honoring those who loved and cared for others amid the violence of the war—including Matt himself. By the end of the novel, Matt understands that he is not to blame for the tragedies of the war—not Rob’s brother’s death, and not his own Vietnamese brother’s injury—and that he can lead a full life in America while still remembering his past. As Matt’s mother tells him, loving his American family won’t mean he loves his Vietnamese family any less, or that he’s forgotten the war that caused so much pain and destruction. Matt, like the Vietnam vets he forges relationships with throughout the novel, can move on—but as his mother says, “It won’t mean / that you’ve forgotten” (208).
Guilt, Forgiveness, and the Healing Power of Love
Throughout All the Broken Pieces, Matt struggles with the guilt he feels because his brother was injured when Matt was supposed to be watching him. Other characters also struggle with guilt throughout the novel, often involving the Vietnam War; in the end, Matt and has family manage to overcome feelings of guilt through the strength of their love, trust, and acceptance.
While Matt doesn’t share the full story of his brother’s injury till late in the novel, early flashes of Matt’s memories reveal that his younger brother is “mangled and deformed,” with “stumps” (9) instead of legs and fingers. Another flashback a third of the way through the novel depicts Matt carrying his brother’s “bruised and wailing body” (89). While Matt’s Vietnamese mother told him that the injury wasn’t his “fault” (89), Matt doesn’t seem to believe her. He is afraid to share the full story of his brother with his American family, or even to remember it itself, because he believes he is so guilty. He worries that his American parents would send him away if they knew the truth, and when he overhears his father discussing a funeral for someone who lived a good life, Matt wonders “what happens / to people if they don’t / live a good life, / if they do something terrible” (83). Matt believes he himself has done something terrible, and his next question—“Do they ever find peace?” (83)—clearly applies to himself.
As the novel continues, the full story of Matt and his brother finally emerges: Matt’s Vietnamese mother warned him to stay inside and watch his brother while she took care of a neighbor, but Matt disobeyed her by going outside, and his brother followed—and stepped on a land mine. Ever since that day, Matt has “kn[own] it was all my fault” (197). The experience has led Matt not only to suppress and hide his memories of the incident, thus increasing his inner turmoil, but also to mistrust love. Matt thinks that his Vietnamese mother must not fully love him after what happened and sent him away for that reason. As he puts it, “she wanted / me to leave because of / who I was and what / I’d done” (157). Matt also feels that his own love for his brother wasn’t strong enough—“didn’t I love him,” he says, and “didn’t I leave anyway?” (67). As a result, Matt has lost faith in love in general, thinking: “Maybe the wind shifts / and love just tiptoes away” (68). Although his American parents constantly tell Matt they love him, he can’t truly believe them, and he’s unable to feel secure in his new home.
Matt’s father is another character who struggles with guilt throughout the novel, as Matt’s dad chose to attend medical school rather than fighting in Vietnam like many of his friends. Matt overhears his dad asking his mom if his choice was “enough” (114), and although she assures him it was the right thing, his father still “feel[s] guilty” (115) that he escaped the duty that caused his friends so much suffering. Matt even worries that for his father, adopting Matt might be a way to atone, “like the coin / you drop in the poor box / at church” (115). Because of Matt’s own deep self-blame, it’s easier for him to believe his father cares for him out of guilt rather than pure, unconditional love.
When Matt attends the Vietnam veterans’ meetings, he sees that those who did fight in the war struggle with guilt as well, with one vet retelling the story of assuring his fellow soldier he wasn’t going to die, when “he knew he was dying, we both knew” (128). Matt, still struggling with his own self-condemnation, wonders what the soldiers would say “if they knew / my story” (131). He worries that, like he suspects his own parents would, they would all “push me away” (131).
For Matt and other characters in the novel, overcoming these deep feelings of guilt occurs through a combination of communication, acceptance, and most of all, trusting in the power of love. This process begins for Matt during the veterans’ meetings themselves, when Jeff uses Matt’s story as an example of the positive contributions American soldiers made. Describing how Matt’s mother gave her son to the Americans, hoping he’d have a better life, Jeff asks, “What kind of faith is that? / What kind of love?” (156). Hearing Jeff’s words, Matt realizes he’s misunderstood his mother’s motives—she didn’t send him away because she blamed him, but “because she loved” (157) him. By listening to and trusting Jeff, and changing his own perception of the past, Matt begins to believe in love and to take the path toward forgiving himself.
As Matt sees the example of the veterans sharing their stories and emotions, supporting each other and beginning to heal, Matt realizes he has to share his own story and feelings of guilt as well. Matt first shares his memories of his brother with his teammate Rob, after Rob’s accusation: “My brother died / because of you” (188). In response to Rob’s words, Matt draws courage from the messages of love he’s received from family and friends, and particularly from Jeff’s words—“What kind of faith is that? / What kind of love?” (156)—and tells Rob how he lost his brother too. For the first time, Matt says plainly, “I knew it was all my fault” (197)—and rather than continuing to blame him, Rob offers him a bandanna to wipe his tears, while the rest of Matt’s team cheers for the two. Rob’s support, as well as his positive experiences in the veterans’ group, gives Matt the courage to take the next step: to trust his adoptive family enough to share the story with them.
When Matt does tell his family the truth, he’s still plagued with guilt, immediately: “I understand / if you hate me” (205). However, when his parents respond with words of love—his mother saying that “you’re our son,” and “nothing, nothing / will ever change that,” and his father insisting that “what happened […] wasn’t your fault” (205)—Matt is finally able to receive and believe their message fully. Matt’s parents have always shown their love, in singing lullabies that assure him he’s safe and home, and in telling Matt he’s their “MVP” (51). Yet now that Matt understands that his birth mother loved him as well, and that the veterans’ groups and his baseball teammates accept him, he is able to truly trust in his new family’s love.
Matt’s mother voices a particularly strong affirmation of the power of love when she tells Matt he can love his new American family, without loving his Vietnamese family any less: “The heart always / has room / for more love” (208). Where guilt causes constriction, leading characters like Matt to hide their feelings and shut others out, love does the opposite. Love leads to expansion, allowing characters to forgive others and themselves, to welcome new relationships and strengthen those that already exist. By the end of the novel, Matt is able to overcome his guilt and feel secure in the love of both his families; he confidently proclaims that along with his American family, “we’re going / to find” (219) his Vietnamese brother.
