48 pages • 1 hour read
Kate MessnerBreakout
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Language
The power of language is a motif that develops The Media’s Role in Shaping Perception. Kate Messner carefully crafts word choice and language throughout the novel to develop tone and show the distinct voices of her characters. The ways tone and voice can influence news coverage is also explored. Language is powerful in both positive and negative ways, since it provides a source of valuable self-expression, but is also used to label and exclude people. As the character most strongly connected with this motif, Elidee calls out the power of language to misrepresent ideas when she writes an anonymous note to the principal about misquoting Alexander Hamilton: “If you want students here to be responsible with language, you should probably be more careful about it yourself” (170). Readers can infer the anonymous note came from Elidee because Mrs. Roy had told her in gym class, “We use language here respectfully and responsibly” (169). In this light, Elidee’s note about taking care with language is an ironic rebuke since it was the other students who were using language irresponsibly to insult her.
Language as self-expression also demonstrates the value of sharing one’s story, as it frees Elidee to tell the truth about her experiences, something she recognizes early in the novel when she urges Troy to work on his appeal, “Like maybe you really could write your way out of that prison, just like Hamilton wrote his way off his island” (54). Throughout the novel, her unsent letters to him become a kind of diary, a place where she can write down all the things that might worry him if he actually knew. At the end of the novel, Elidee uses the power of language in her poetry to free herself, writing to the admissions committee at Morgan Academy, “I believe in Truth in Time Capsules / And telling your own story, / So that’s what I’m doing now” (407).
Owen’s notebook is an example of visual storytelling; it depicts his desires for his birthday party and helps him feel a sense of safety. After the inmates are spotted at the Carnival, drawing and writing helps him manage the terror of the lockdown. On that same day, Elidee and Nora both choose writing as an escape from worrying about what’s happening outside, saying, “I’m going to write some lines so I don’t have to keep listening and wondering” (359) and “now that I’m done telling the story so far, I’m really scared again” (368), respectively. Messner uses the motif to illustrate one way people cope with their fears.
Circles and Diagrams
Circles and diagrams are key visual elements in the novel, and they most often symbolize people’s efforts to orient themselves and make sense of the world. Owen’s map of the backyard helps him imagine himself a hero, Lizzie’s pie charts and Venn diagrams classify and contextualize similarities and differences, and Nora’s map of the relay route helps her describe the confusion of the day after the inmates are sighted.
The most prominent use of this motif is the symbolic “circle of support” the community claims to form after the inmates escape; Messner uses it to show who is inside and outside the circle, and the way biases and privilege play into this once it becomes evident that some people are never allowed inside the circle at all. As Nora notes, “Elidee hasn’t lived here forever like everybody else, so I guess she’s outside the circle” (174). However, Bill Tucker, Priscilla Wadsworth, and Lizzie Bruno, all people who have lived in Wolf Creek “forever,” find themselves outside the circle once they do something the community deems unworthy of its support. Messner shows that circles can provide a sense of belonging but can also be used to divide and label.
Choices and Consequences
The motif of choices appears later in the novel, as the characters grapple with the notion of consequences, justice, and injustice. In letters to Troy, Elidee explicitly considers the impacts of people’s choices and their consequences, writing, “We always have choices. Doesn’t feel that way, but we always do. Even when we feel so stuck we pretend we don’t” (285), and “When [the inmate who was shot] broke out of there, he had to have a good idea how that story was going to end” (405). When Nora takes steps to understand and practice civil disobedience, Messner again explores the balance of choice and consequence. Human actions, Messner suggests, are always a choice, and often have irrevocable consequences, as Elidee notes in one of her poems: “In one can’t-go-back-and-change-it minute / His life would never be the same. / And neither would mine” (221).
After Priscilla is arrested, Messner draws parallels between her and Troy that emphasize their similarities over their differences, and the idea that both were good people who made a series of bad choices is central to this. In a letter to her grandmother, Lizzie suggests she probably felt stuck after breaking small rules with the inmates, who threatened to “tell your bosses about the other rules you broke” (248); Elidee’s explanation of the events that led to Troy’s imprisonment is similar to this, as she describes him as a small kid who started hanging out with the wrong crowd because they “looked out for him. Only then they started making him do stuff” (371). Both characters became trapped by the series of choices they made, and now they and their loved ones are paying the consequences—whether this is justice or injustice, Messner leaves it to the reader to consider.
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