Racial issues
The author deeply investigates the issue of racial relations in the story. It is being depicted from the beginning of the story: when Matilda first saw him, she lost courage before his “…age and white skin”. The author shows the loneliness of the only white man in the island. When Mr Watts is asked how he felt being white, he says: “What is like to be white? What is like to be white on this island? A bit of what the last mammoth must have felt, I suppose. Lonely at times.”
Faith
This theme is opened in two ways in the story: the first concerns faith in God, and the second – in characters of the book. The second one helps the author more vividly depict the first one. While reading the story, the reader sees that the author doesn’t believe and support the faith as just religion. He supports true, sincere faith in anything, not only God. For example, in Pip from “Great Expectations”. He shows this support writing that Dolores’ Bible burned down after the Redskins burned the village, but “Great Expectations” somehow were saved.
War
The whole story is built in such way that the war always stands on the background of the main events of the plot. The war changes everything in bad way: beginning with nature (the author sometimes depicts in parallel the beautiful and bright landscapes and the grey “traces” of war in it, and this contrast strengthens the impression of “unfitness” of the war in the world), and ending with people’s lives (so that actually each character of the story felt some influence of the war).
