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Chapter 23
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Freak the Mighty, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Friendship
The Power of Storytelling
Memory, Grief, and Trauma
Family Legacy vs. Individuality
Summary
Analysis
Max isn’t supposed to bother anyone at the hospital but he doesn’t think it’s possible for him to mess anything up. The next morning, he sneaks out early, hoping to check on Freak and make it back home by breakfast. He almost runs to the hospital in the near dark. There’s nobody in the lobby, but the nurses in the ICU see Max coming. One runs up to him and says that he must be Maxwell. She can only say “oh dear” when Max asks if Kevin is back from surgery yet. Another nurse tells someone to page Dr. Spivak, since Kevin was her patient. Max notices that some of the nurses are crying, and all of a sudden, he snaps.
Max snaps because it seems, suddenly, as though nothing he thought was true actually is. Freak isn’t receiving his operation—he’s dead. This, to Max, means either that the bionic operation wasn’t real or that Freak lied to him. Given how much progress Max has made in learning to trust others, both of these options are unthinkable. Either one of them being true might suggest that Max shouldn’t trust anything that Freak said.
Themes
A nurse tries to hug Max, but he throws her off and runs. He feels like Kicker again and he feels ready to hit anyone who tries to touch him. He runs until he gets to doors marked “medical research” and he punches through the glass. Max keeps running until he gets to solid locked doors. He punches and kicks them until the hospital security officers catch up and they finally tackle Max to the ground. Dr. Spivak finds Max handcuffed and surrounded by cops. She apologizes to Max, but Max spits that Freak believed her that he was going to get a new body from the Bionics Unit. Dr. Spivak makes the cops let Max up, asks for coffee, and bandages for Max’s hands. She asks Max to tell her about what Freak told him.
The attempted hug reminds Max of how people tried to hug him right after Annie’s death, which only compounds his trauma. He now has to relive his mother’s death, as well as deal with the surprising death of his best and only friend. Though Max does behave violently here, it’s only because he’s so upset and traumatized—Max wouldn’t do this of his own volition. Dr. Spivak’s kindness, however, begins to suggest to Max that what he learned from friendship with Freak wasn’t all a lie—he can, and should, trust adults.
Themes
Max explains everything about the medical research lab and Freak’s bionic body. He asks if it was just a lie to keep Freak from being scared, but Dr. Spivak points out that it was impossible to lie to Kevin—she tried once when he was seven, but he went and looked up his condition in a medical dictionary. This convinces Max that she’s telling the truth. Dr. Spivak explains that Kevin has known for a long time that he wasn’t going to live very long. When Max asks if Freak lied about getting a bionic body, Dr. Spivak says it wasn’t a lie. She thinks that he needed something to hope for, so he invented the bionic body. Max agrees and he asks what actually happened. Dr. Spavik says that Freak’s heart got too big for his body. Later, the cops let Max go without arresting him.
Dr. Spivak takes Grim’s insistence that stories and tales are meant to entertain a step further. She insists that stories aren’t just for entertainment purposes—they exist to give people hope and to help them find meaning in their lives. Though she talks specifically about Freak as she explains this, hopefully Max will take her words to heart and realize that he, too, can harness storytelling to find meaning. He does eventually do this by following through on Freak’s request to tell Freak the Mighty’s story.
Themes
