Ship Breaker theme and structure

My book is structured in a pretty standard layout. Like most books it is written in third person about the main character. However as he crawls through the ship his internal thoughts are italicized, like when he thinks, “Don’t panic. You took this wire down yourself. You just need to keep following it—” (Bacigalupi) One of the themes that is starting to develop is how valuable teamwork is. Each person has a vital role to help make sure the job gets done. Also, competition comes into play because among each team, members have to compete to make sure they keep their spot. So far there is one main goal Nailer has, which is shared by most of the characters. His goal is to survive. He has to work really hard to make sure he keeps his job so he can get food to live. I think another goal he has is to learn his family history, but he is unable to complete or work on that goal because of his quest to survive. I would like to know how he is going to try to balance both ambitions. I speculate that Pima who is really bossy, and has taken the leadership role plans to make sure she is in control of all of the people in the group. I have attached a video that support the idea of teamwork.

Ship Breaker characters and conflict

For my sophomore summer reading assignment, I am reading the book Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. The core character in my book is Nailer. Nailer is part of a unit of children who work under a strict boss to take metal and other supplies off of boats that have sunk. Nailer is the finest in his group at retrieving things from the boats. His group competes with other groups in order to acquire the most money. They are required to do this because it is the only way they can make money. However as they grow older they will not be allowed continue it because they will be too big to fit in the crevices of the boat. I predict that at some point in their search they will find something really valuable or magical or something of the sorts. The other characters in the crew are Sloth, who is Nailer’s best friend and Pima, who is really bossy.  There is also Moon Girl, Tick-Tock and Pearly who we don’t know a lot about yet. I am curious to know how these characters will serve in specific roles. A remarkable detail of the book is Nailer’s mom is dead and and the story of her death is sort of mysterious, and his dad is very abusive, increasing the mystery. Also, it is emphasized that Nailer’s past is unknown, so I predict we will learn more about that through the book. His past reminds me of Harry Potter from the Harry Potter series. Both characters don’t know at least one parent; live with some one now who doesn’t love them and it is a big mystery. The pictures are of the Titanic, which is the most famous sunken ship and shows some of the danger the characters may face.