Milkweed

While the novel is undoubtedly about the Holocaust and the struggle of the Jewish people, it is also a novel about identity. In a time where one’s name, appearance, and identification can result in persecution and even death, Spinelli chooses to frame the novel around a nameless boy who chooses to become a Jew. Identity is a fluid and abstract thing in the novel and is reminiscent of Michel Foucault’s theory on identity. Foucault rejects the notion that identity is a permanent essence of a person’s being; instead, he believes that selfhood is composed of a multitude of constantly-shifting relationships with other people. This theory around identity fully supports the way that Spinelli structures the protagonist’s selfhood throughout the novel.

Remembering nothing about his past, Misha initially calls himself “Stopthief,” an echo of the people he so frequently stole from (9). Stopthief’s initial name is thus born from his interactions with passersby and the victims of his quick fingers. Later, Uri bequeaths a name unto Stopthief and his identity is once again altered: “And so, thanks to Uri, in a cellar beneath a barbershop somewhere in Warsaw, Poland, in autumn of the year nineteen thirty-nine, I was born, you might say” (29).