47 pages • 1 hour read
Jaleigh JohnsonThe Mark of the Dragonfly
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Finding Home
The entire plot of The Mark of the Dragonfly hinges on returning Anna to her home. Consequently, it isn’t surprising that home looms large in the consciousness of both Anna and Piper. Initially, Piper’s desire to restore Anna to her family is purely mercenary since she hopes to claim a large reward for the girl’s return. Anna has no notion of where her home is and can’t help Piper find any context in which to fit her.
Aside from Piper’s interest in returning Anna to her family, Piper has her own obsession with the subject of home. Her orphan status makes her feel like an outcast in the scrap town where she lives, but Piper also has the inner sense that she doesn’t belong there. By placing Anna in a mansion in Noveen, she hopes to find a better home for herself as well.
Ironically, Doloman claims Anna as his daughter and wants to give her a place in his home, but both Anna and Piper react negatively to his offer. This response begs the question of what constitutes one’s true home. Presumably, a home contains a family with which one is emotionally connected. Doloman might be able to offer the material benefits of a home but no emotional connection. Clearly, this is what both Anna and Piper mean by “home” when they discuss the subject.
The two girls aren’t the only characters who have experienced difficulties establishing where they belong. Gee is also afflicted with a troubled past. He had a home and family, but his parents sold him into slavery. Such an act of betrayal might be expected to sour anyone on the idea of a home, yet Gee feels he has found one on the 401. He has substituted a stationary home for a traveling one and the bonds of blood kinship for the emotional ties he feels with Jeyne and Trimble.
Piper will eventually reach the same conclusion as Gee. She wants to stay on the train because she feels that this is where she belongs. Further, she chooses to tie herself to Anna. This bond isn’t simply because the mechanical girl will cease to function if Piper leaves. Long before Piper knows of Anna’s origins, she is presented with the chance to take Anna’s money and abandon the girl, but she doesn’t. The sisterly tie between the two girls established itself long before Piper realizes her synergist connection to Anna. If home is where the heart is, Piper and Anna have found that staying together is home enough for both of them.
The Competition for Resources
The world of Solace is plagued by shortages of one kind or another. Resources are in short supply, and characters at both ends of the social spectrum seem to be equally plagued by lack. The initial and most obvious example is Piper herself. We first see her as an orphan living in a rundown shack and trying to scratch out a living for herself as a scavenger and mechanic. Her plight is hardly unique, as most of the other residents of Scrap Town Sixteen are equally poor.
While Piper doesn’t resort to outright thievery to survive, she is fiercely competitive for the limited resources available to her. So is her young friend Micah. He risks breathing toxic air or getting struck by a meteor because he is determined to be the first scavenger in the fields after the storm ends. The most valuable debris is always snatched up quickest. Micah’s desire to claim a prize earns him the reward of a serious head injury. Although Piper scolds Micah for his recklessness, she is nearly as foolhardy herself in going to rescue him during the storm. Further, she stows away on a train to bundle Anna back to Noveen, hoping to collect her own reward.
During their travels southward, Piper and Anna witness more examples of people willing to lie, cheat, and steal for money. Although slavery is illegal, slavers are everywhere and will capture any innocent who strays into their clutches. In addition, a group of slavers is willing to abduct Anna and Piper after being bribed by Doloman. Later in the journey, the crew of the 401 must fight off another group fueled by greed. These airborne bandits are intent on capturing the train’s valuable cargo. Piper excuses the bandits because they are acting out of desperation, as most poor people in the realm do. Everyone is competing for something in limited supply.
Ultimately, the blame for the region’s poverty can be attributed to the governments of the Merrow Kingdom and the Dragonfly territories. The scramble for resources that the common folk experience is being passed down from the highest levels. Merrow wants to manufacture more weapons to invade the iron-rich Dragonfly realm. The Dragonfly king intends to extract all the iron available in his territory to build ships and aircraft for exploration. In the process, peasant farmers are displaced. Both governments seem indifferent to the poverty they create in their greed to gain more resources for themselves. In the world of Solace, even the wealthiest see themselves as impoverished.
Hybrid Identities
None of the central characters in The Mark of the Dragonfly could be considered normal. They all have some unique characteristic that would prevent them from being accepted into mainstream society. Piper is acutely sensitive to standing out in any way. While still living in Scrap Town Sixteen, she worries that people might notice her almost magical ability to repair machines. Her neighbors would be inclined to label her a witch for possessing such abilities. She is right to fear nonconformity because she is nearly killed by a group of bandits later in the novel after making all their crossbows malfunction by willing this to happen. Even after her synergist gift is pointed out to her, Piper denies her power and tries to ignore it. Only at the very end of the story does she appreciate and embrace what makes her unique.
The other characters in the novel also possess characteristics that might get them shunned by ordinary people. Jeyne has a metal arm. The reader is never given an explanation for this phenomenon, but it makes her an off-putting figure to those who don’t know the engineer well. Trimble is a synergist who can command fire. While this makes him especially useful for stoking a train’s firebox, the skill might get him ostracized in the outer world. Gee has an even more difficult time fitting into society because he can shape-shift into a frightening winged creature. Again, this is useful when trying to defend a train but makes it hard to assimilate into any other kind of world. Jeyne notes the irony of her crew’s gifts: “Jeyne often said that between the fireman who was immune to fire and Gee the chamelin, her crew would fit just as comfortably in the capital circus as on the 401” (99). Although this quote doesn’t use the derogatory word “freak” to describe the crew, the implication is clear.
Ironically, the one character who seems absolutely ordinary is the most unconventional of all. Anna is part human and part machine. Her prodigious analytical skills might set her apart among ordinary humans but not in a way that would draw an unusual degree of fear or suspicion. Even Piper, the mechanical synergist, is fooled by Anna’s outwardly normal behavior. In considering this group of people, all of whom are hybrids of one sort or another, it would appear that the only context in which their traits are an asset is aboard the 401.
