52 pages • 1 hour read
Shadow Jumper
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Symbols & Motifs
Ashes
The symbolic ashes highlight the themes of The Bonds of Friendship and Teamwork and Solving Mysteries and Overcoming Obstacles. Beth has been devastated by the death of her parents, and she carries their ashes around with her as a sort of penance.
The ashes are heavy, and Beth is literally weighed down by her burden. She forces herself to carry them around with her everywhere, but this makes her “baggage” cumbersome to deal with. As an orphan, she feels very alone. Jack is the first person with whom she can be honest about the ashes. She recognizes that few people would understand, and she postpones telling him the truth because she fears that it will alienate him and further isolate her. However, after a series of mishaps that result in the spilling of the ashes, Beth realizes that her parents are with her not because she carries their remains around, but because they are such a significant part of her.
In the climax of the novel, Jack must choose between saving Beth’s life or prioritizing saving the ashes. He chooses to save Beth, which she appreciates. She realizes that her parents would have preferred this too. After Beth accepts that her parents’ ashes are not the absolute essence of her parents, she finds closure through her separation from the ashes, which she would not have thought possible before she met Jack.
Animals
The motif of animals reflects the sub-theme of Coping with Illness and Physical Limitations and the theme of Solving Mysteries and Overcoming Obstacles. When the bus that Jack and Beth are riding on hits a Labrador, the friends are intrigued by its coincidental presence and by its sad, scarred appearance. They postulate that the dog was also being experimented on in the laboratory. Jack feels a sort of solidarity with the dog; he assumes that it was subjected to harsh conditions and used for the same kind of experimentation that he fears he was subjected to as a baby.
When Jack and Beth encounter the rodents in the lab, they realize that they have also been subjected to experimentation. Jack, now firmly believing that he was a guinea pig for his father, identifies the same sort of powerlessness and vulnerability shared by children and animals. He believes that both have been reduced to test subjects and neither is seen as particularly valuable or deserving of agency. Forced to confront the plight of the lab rats, Jack recognizes that children are just as susceptible to the evil machinations of adults who do not care about them. When he and Beth confront Dr. Blackstone, they are told that the unhealthy-looking rats (which have the same scars and sores as the Labrador) were used to test the anti-aging serum; they will be put to sleep so that they do not contaminate the other rats.
Rooftops
The symbol of the rooftops evokes the themes of Coping with Illness and Physical Limitations, The Bonds of Friendship and Teamwork, and Solving Mysteries and Overcoming Obstacles. Jack is separated from his peers by his obvious skin condition. He is accustomed to isolation and feels uncomfortable functioning in regular social settings. For Jack, the rooftops enable a previously inaccessible source of freedom: He can be himself up there. While he feels weak on the ground, he feels powerful and untethered on the roofs. He moves in ways that regular people can’t, and he achieves a new sense of vision and perspective as he contemplates the world from his treasured vantage point.
Because Jack meets Beth on the rooftop, he feels a sort of kinship with her that he does not feel with anyone else. He invites her into his special sphere and she proves herself worthy of sharing this space with him and capable of utilizing the rooftops as Jack does. For the pair of friends, the rooftops prove to be an equal space where they can be themselves without fear of judgement.
It is suggested that Jack and Beth are able to beat Kai on the rooftop but would not have been able to do so on the ground. The rooftop is a special realm that belongs to the isolated children, and Kai’s portrayal as a more typical teen and bully precludes his success in the rooftop realm.
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