73 pages • 2 hours read
Jeff SmithBone
Fiction | Graphic Novel/Book | YA | Published in 1991A 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
Orphanhood and Found Family
A number of the characters in Bone are explicitly identified as orphans, including Thorn, the Bone Cousins, Roderick, and the woodland children. Most of these characters were orphaned by rat creatures, who consumed their parents as either acts of war or acts of survival. The Valley is plagued by war, political unrest, and scarcity, all of which naturally result in the mass orphaning of children in the real world.
Another echelon of Bone characters includes those who are implied to be orphans or otherwise linked with orphanhood. In a broader sense, Bartleby is orphaned from rat creature society. Rat creatures travel in packs, but Bartleby was abandoned in his infancy, and he failed to reintegrate. Taneal and her brother are apparently street urchins who fend for themselves; no mention is made of their family. The loosest example of implicit orphanhood is Jon Oaks: He is a young man, roughly Thorn’s age, and his bond with Lucius is described as that of a father and son, implying that they mutually fill familial roles for each other that would be empty otherwise.
Although we don’t know what killed the Bone Cousins’ parents, their status as orphans allows them to bond with Thorn over a shared traumatic experience. This bonding, in turn, allows Thorn to heal, accept help, and defeat the Lord of the Locusts. Likewise, Roderick and the other woodland orphans formed a coherent, interdependent group for safety and companionship. By the end of Bone, Bartleby has integrated into the Bone family through his friendship with Smiley. In life, Jonathan and Lucius had a father–son dynamic. The Bone Cousins maintain a family dynamic amongst themselves, albeit a non-nuclear one, and the same is true of Thorn and her grandmother. Though orphanhood and loss are common among Bone’s cast, the characters still find warmth, camaraderie, and safety by establishing extended and found families.
Stars
Stars are a primarily visual motif in Bone, but they are both symbolically significant and relevant to the plot. The stars that are the most important in Bone are depicted in diegetic representational art: the cartoon star on Phoney’s shirt and the one that appears on the Harvestar royal crest. The crest depicts the earth and sky swirling around a star and a crown. This image alludes to the connection between the Dreaming and the physical world, which is monitored by the royal line of Ven-Yan-Cari. The name “Harvestar” itself is an amalgamation of “harvest” and “star,” further connecting Thorn and the royal family to both physical labor and divinity.
In contrast, the star on Phoney’s shirt is the product of sheer happenstance. When Briar found his “omen”—the campaign float—it is implied that she paid special attention to the star because she identified him as “the one […] [with] the star on its chest” (27). In her culture, images of stars bear spiritual and political significance. Had Phoney worn any other shirt on the day he left Boneville, it is unlikely that the Bone Cousins would have been swarmed by locusts in the first place. This point lends stars a connection to randomness, fate, and the whims of fortune.
Seasonal Cycles
The nine books in Bone are organized into three sections of three books. Each of these sections bears an alternate title that corresponds to a seasonal marker: Vernal Equinox, Solstice, and Harvest. The vernal equinox refers to the beginning of spring; the solstice refers to the beginnings of winter and summer; the harvest is a time of reaping crops in autumn. Separating Bone into sections based on these events serves both structural and thematic purposes.
The structural purpose of these seasonally themed alternate titles is that they correspond roughly to the time of year in the story. Vernal Equinox begins at the end of autumn and ends with the beginning of spring. Solstice takes place over the course of summer, and Harvest spans from that autumn through to the following spring. These alternate titles help to ground Bone in a specific timeframe; its events take place over the course of a year and a half. Changes in the weather play a key role in the plot as it influences where the characters can go, the food they have access to, and how comfortable they are while traveling.
The thematic value of seasonal cycles in Bone is multilayered. It nests neatly into the reoccurring motif of agriculture, which is necessarily directed by the time of the season and quality of the weather. Events such as the equinox, the solstice, and the harvest also carry much symbolic weight in cultures across the world, especially agrarian societies. The coming of spring is a near-universal symbol of beginnings and rebirth; as such, Bone begins and ends in the springtime. Likewise, the winter solstice is the longest, darkest night of the year, and the summer solstice marks the longest day. Bone’s middle section begins in summer, which links it to the Summer Solstice, but it also precedes the darkest and most perilous events of the plot, linking it to the winter solstice as well. Titling the final section Harvest reflects the story’s happy ending: The characters spend a year toiling, reap the fruits of their labor, and enjoy a safe, comfortable winter. “Harvest” also refers to the Atheian royal family’s surname: Harvestar.
