Chains is the second book in the The departee series by Laurie Halse Anderson. It follows a group of young adults as they transition into adulthood. This book has a theme of waiting for what you want.
This theme is represented by the character Amanda, who waits for her dream job as an editor at The New York Times Style. She hopes that she will be able to fulfill her desire when she eventually gets it.
Amanda’s dream job is very desirable, so people tend to wait long before they accept her application. She has to fight hard to get what she wants, and that shows in her writing.
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Personal choices have profound consequences
We are currently living in a era where personal choices have very large consequences. We can spend our lives watching reality TV, being influenced by what is popular in advertising, the way we measures success and fails with people, and yet out main value is being yourself.
Many of our modern day values were created in the late 1700s and early 1800s when people were much different in culture, religion, social structures, and emotions. When you look at how things are today, it is crazy how much has changed.
For example: We were not allowed to be honest with each other or God during that time, but now we live in a society where if you’re honest about something, you are worth less than if you try to hide it. This has totally backfired on people because they are now realists who tell others what they want to hear but are actually not true.
Good people can make bad decisions
We often think of people as either good or bad, depending on the situation. If they are described as civilians, then they are good; if they are police officers, then they are bad.
We make judgments based on who they are and what they do. We say good people kill, kill people. We say bad people cheat, cheat people.
We make these judgments based on our own personal experiences and what we know about people and situations we know nothing about applies to them.
No one is perfect and no one is entirely rational when making decisions that affect others. We all have ulterior motives for everything we do and for who we choose to associate with.
This is not something to be ashamed of but rather looking at ourselves in a different light and understanding the decisions we make must be made in the context of others.
Everyone struggles with choosing the right path
When chains start to weigh you down, you have to decide whether to follow your passions, or what everyone is telling you to do. You can find happiness by doing what you are passionate about, but also what everyone else is saying you should do.
Everyone has a path they walk, and it’s up to them to choose how they walk it. This can be walked in the way they feel comfortable or with confidence. People who walk on the less confident side are more likely to ask for help than people who walk on the more confident side.
The theme of chains is about taking risks and finding your path to happyness, not about following someone else’s and being told what to do.
There is no such thing as a perfect family
We’re not told that in chains, but we can tell that having one or more members in a less than perfect family doesn’t mean you’re not a good person Cheong Chung, the father of the children he couples with, is always there when they need him.
Choong Chung is a very strong father who sticks by his children through thick and thin. He may not be perfect, but he is worth listening to.
The theme of chains runs deep in Chains. Every member of the family has a chain that binds them together. These chains hold them back from being who they want to be blancheaux , their true selves.
These people don’t know each other yet, but you can tell they will be enemies blancheaux , because they both hate their families and each other. They fight like kids blancheaux , which makes you love them even more.
Darkness and evil exist in the world
A central idea ofarellaes on is that evil exists in the world and that bad things happen in the world.
Evil is a part of our world and it is important to pay attention to it, because despite its presence, there are still good people.
There are examples of good people in every culture, no matter what country they live in. It is hard to determine whether someone is good or evil, but when there are criminals that go free, it looks like leadership may be choosing what is evil over what is good.
The theme ofarellaes on is that we must learn how to be wise enough not to listen to evil leaders or even simple messages from people who are evil. We must have the inner strength to decide for ourselves whether something is good or evil.
When we listen to leaders who are evil, we do something immediate: we make them more powerful. We also send a message into the community that they believe what they say matters.
Teenagers experience many of the same feelings as adults do
Feelings of love, longing, and nostalgia are widespread. Things that once meant a lot or were difficult to obtain have made people aware of their values and importance.
Teenagers feel a sense of accomplishment when they achieve a goal together as a group, and they enjoy being able to rely on others as they navigate life. They also enjoy the physical activity that comes with joining a group, and they appreciate the feeling of being involved in something significant to someone else
When adults join groups, there is an assumption that the members will share their knowledge and experience. People do not tend to learn anything new when they are only interested in getting involved for the money!
Adults who joined a group during their time at school or work can still benefit from meeting other people with similar goals and experiences.
Teenagers are just as capable of making good decisions as adults are
This assumption is made even more strongly when you consider that teenagers make nearly all of their decisions without the guidance of adult sources.
What they see and hear daily makes them more likely to believe in and rely on their own abilities rather than those of others, even if those others are not very good at what they do.
Teenagers also make most of their decisions in terms of consequences rather than rewards. When you look at a reward-based decision such as working for money instead of an enjoyment-based one like choosing where to live, the former is much more likely to prevail.
This can have serious consequences, as we will see later on in this article. When something bad happens as a result of your decision, you may not feel like you were really responsible because of the reward–and you may end up suffering from stress in the future.
Parents may not always realize how their actions affect their children
Sometimes, we don’t realize how our actions as parents affect our children until later.
When our child is an adult and they’re feeling some kind of pressure from the parents-to-be, for example, they may think that was good money and food spent by their parents-to-be, but they might be thinking about what their parents did during that time.
They may be thinking about how much they valued their parents’ time and attention, and how little they know about personal choices made by them. They may be thinking that because they chose not to have kids themselves, it must be hard for themartedly.
When adults don’t know what young things are like, it can lead to judgments such as that one person alone cannot tell if they are mature or not. When one person is not enough evidence to make a judgment, it can lead to trouble.