the murderers “crawling” all over his roof. Mrs. Sands accused him of being a “glutton” and a “sneak,” saying that she was likely to find a great collection of her missing preserves beneath his bed. The dwarf looked at Ren, assuming that Ren had told Mrs. Sands about the preserves. However, Mrs. Sands began laughing and then coughing, which made both the dwarf and Ren very worried. The dwarf had to make his own dinner for a while, but soon Mrs. Sands recovered enough to cook for everyone again. In the ensuing months, they brought her kitchen back to a functional state, and her pantry slowly filled up again. When she made cake, she gave Ren and the dwarf the largest slices.

After the picnic, the mousetrap girl with the gap in her teeth begins chasing Brom among the graves, and soon a game of tag is started. Everyone chases Brom, who is so fast that no one can catch him. The girl with the harelip, Jenny, removes her shawl and spreads it out over one of the headstones, which is so old that the name that was once inscribed upon it had worn away. Ren thinks that, though no one knows who the person is anymore, the headstone “looked warmed, and grateful for being chosen.” Ren realizes that Jenny is looking around for Benjamin, with her face “animated and full of hope.” Ren wonders if Benjamin is really hiding somewhere nearby and then realizes that he will always be looking for him no matter where he is. He looks past the common and at the river. He can feel “the pull of the current,” the “promise of deep water.” He decides to join the mousetrap girls and Ichy in their pursuit of Brom, who is still faster than everyone else. Ren runs toward them with fingers reaching out, “closing in, then missing, missing, missing, missing.”

Analysis

The epilogue attempts to tie together all of the major themes in the novel, providing conclusive arguments for some while refraining from providing resolution for others. With the death of McGinty and the potential reopening of the mousetrap factory under different ownership, the commodification of bodies seen throughout the novel might be less dehumanizing. However, Doctor Milton is presumably still accepting deliveries of corpses and still performing amputations at the hospital. The mousetrap girls are still regarded as less than human, as shown by the fact that they are still regarded as a mass of ugly, unmarried girls. The Harelip is still identified as the Harelip, despite the fact that we know her name is Jenny. Therefore, none of the moral and ethical problems posed by commodifying bodies and treating them as less than human are resolved.

The novel takes a strong position on the contrasting values of abstract idealism and pragmatic materialism, primarily through character foils. Benjamin and Dolly, for example, are the paternal figures in Ren’s life. Though both characters can be ruthlessly pragmatic, Dolly is far more loyal and ultimately subscribes to Ren’s idealistic views of friendship, love, and loyalty when he sacrifices his own life to save Ren's. Conversely, Benjamin’s only selfless—if it can be called selfless—act of loyalty towards Ren is that he used manipulation to arrange for Ren to inherit the mousetrap factory before abandoning him again. Similarly, Mrs. Sands and Tom are characters who attempt to create families in order to make up for tragic losses in their own lives. Though both characters adopt abandoned children, Mrs. Sands is a stable maternal figure who does not break her promises when they become inconvenient. Tom, on the other hand, nearly abandons both Ren and the twins because he simply cannot be bothered with the responsibility of caring for children. Furthermore, he only promises not to return them to Saint Anthony’s after Ren inherits the mousetrap factory. Mrs. Sands is the true, ideal parent, whereas Tom is the farcical, pragmatic parent. It seems, then, that idealism is tied to self-sacrifice and loyalty, while materialism—which is closely tied to survivalism—is tied to selfishness and betrayal.

Finally, the important theme of mothers and mothering finds its conclusion in both Mrs. Sands’s adoption of Ren and the revelation that Margaret truly loved Ren before she died. Throughout the novel, Ren grapples with both the mystery of his mother’s identity and the betrayal inherent in her abandonment of him. Though mothering cannot be inextricably tied to loyalty, given that Brom and Ichy’s mother committed suicide, Ren’s experience with mothers aligns with his expectations of the family ideal. Margaret sewed his name into a collar because she loved him, but her tragic circumstances prevented her from caring for him so she left him with Sister Agnes. Mrs. Sands assumes a maternal role the moment he enters her house, and she fulfills her promise to never be parted from him again even though he contributed to her house being destroyed. She even provides for Brom and Ichy, who have been rejected by society because of a superstition about twins being unlucky. Therefore, it seems that the maternal ideal is fulfilled for Ren, and that was always his greatest wish.