57 pages • 1 hour read
24 Hours In Nowhere
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Themes
Conquering Challenges Through Cooperation
Content Warning: This section discusses bullying, violence, and a cave in.
Throughout the novel, the characters face many obstacles, both as they navigate the cave and challenge Bo’s cruelty. Ultimately, the characters are best able to overcome these challenges when they work cooperatively, looking to each other for support, guidance, and a unified purpose.
Over the span of 24 hours, the characters encounter challenges on multiple fronts: Not only are they the target of Bo’s greed, but they also find themselves in a mysterious cave, with no clear escape plan. Such challenges seem naturally daunting, and even Gus wonders, rhetorically, “So what does one do when a mine starts to cave in on them?” (71). However, the characters act quickly, and as they brave the cave and their bully, they realize that their strength lies in cooperation. For instance, when Matthew slips into a crevice, they decide to coat him in Twinkies filling and cooperatively pull him to freedom: “Just go limp and let Jessie and me pull you up,” Rossi instructs (118). The plan proves successful.
The group adopts a similar approach as they mount their long-awaited escape: They hoist each other up and through a rock shaft, with “someone at the top to help pull and someone down […] to help push” (203). At this point in the novel, the group has pursued multiple paths to freedom, each with little return: They can’t scale the cliffside, they lose the javelinas’ trail, and Rossi struggles to decode the map. It’s telling that in this climax of their efforts, Bowling stresses the effectiveness of cooperation; they’re saved by their willingness to work together. Furthermore, after they escape the cave, the group’s face-off with Bo similarly emphasizes cooperation. For instance, when Bo destroys Rossi’s bike, Matthew steps in. “You can use my bike, Rossi,” he offers, empowering Rossi to defeat Bo once and for all. When Bo angrily confronts Rossi after the race, both Matthew and Gus intervene on her behalf, criticizing Bo as a “liar” and protecting each other from his blows. Just as in the cave, the group finally dethrones Bo when they work together.
To better develop this theme, Bowling emphasizes not just the effectiveness of working together but also the ineffectiveness of working alone. For instance, as soon as Matthew breaks away from Gus and Jessie, he slips into the crevice, and Gus admits that he might’ve done the same if “Jessie hadn’t pulled [him] back” (106). Later, too, when Rossi drifts behind in the lake, she slips under the water, and Gus just barely rescues her in time. This lesson applies similarly to the group’s challenges with Bo: When Gus goes rogue and takes a swing at Bo, he misses, and Bo lands a hit “full-force on [his] nose” (239). Tellingly, each time the group acts alone, they fail to overcome the challenge at hand—a sharp contrast to the demonstrated success of working together. As they gather after the race, the group weighs both these strategies, thinking of the school year ahead. Fittingly, they end the novel on the side of cooperation: “[S]tick together,” they vow, their hands joined as one (256).
Transcending Family History
Deeply affected by the past, the characters often judge themselves and each other based on the actions, prejudices, and failures of their ancestors. However, after a trying journey through the cave, they accept that the past has no bearing on the present. Finally free, the characters are empowered to define themselves individually, without consideration of their family and their mistakes.
In a novel so closely concerned with history and its telling, it’s fitting that the characters should be unusually aware of their family legacy. Indeed, at the novel’s beginning, the characters often consider themselves and their present circumstances as a direct reflection of their family’s past. For instance, Jessie, who is directly related to José Navarro, argues that had his relative successfully escaped with the gold, his family “wouldn’t still be here, poor as dogs, not even enough money to get a new dirt bike, living on scraps” (68). In Jessie’s mind, Navarro’s death is directly responsible for the family’s generational poverty; even before he was born, Jessie was doomed to live in Nowhere, without the resources to escape. Gus, too, interprets his family’s neglect as evidence of his limited worth: After being abandoned by his father, Gus decided that “no one in this world wants [him]” (116).
The characters also turn this philosophy around on each other, and their preconceptions interfere with their developing friendships. This concept is most evident with Matthew, William Dufort’s great-grandson. Incensed on Navarro’s behalf, Jessie criticizes Dufort as a “cheating, backstabbing, murdering piece of garbage” and frequently tussles with Matthew (66), acting out a decades-old feud in real time. Matthew’s tension with Gus also takes a similar form: Matthew claims Gus’s pocket watch as his own and calls him a “little thief” (120). Though the conflict between Dufort and Navarro is ancient history, it still engenders prejudice between their descendants, threatening any effort toward friendship.
However, over the course of their journey, the characters enjoy self-determination, and they ultimately accept that family history has no real bearing on their own decency, kindness, and ability to form meaningful friendships. For instance, Gus proves himself more than capable of heroics: He strikes the mountain lion, performs CPR on Rossi, and even physically confronts Bo. Bolstered by a new confidence, Gus accepts that he’s worth “a whole lot more” than his father’s abandonment (228). Similarly, Jessie and Matthew prove unlikely, but steadfast, allies. It’s Matthew, for instance, who carries Jessie after his injury, with Jessie “clinging to his back” (196). Gus and Matthew, too, bury the hatchet, and Gus hands over the pocket watch as a peace offering. The characters overcome the grievances and insecurities of generations past. Instead, they judge themselves and each other as individuals, based on their feats in the cave and a deeper willingness to work together. The characters also recognize this change in perspective: “What happened back then has nothing to do with us now” (192), Jessie decides as they decide to split up the gold. In this way, Bowling argues that actions—and not family—are the true metric of character, empowering each of the novel’s protagonists to control their own fate.
Escaping Oppressive Circumstances
Throughout the novel, the characters long to escape Nowhere and its many limitations—similarly, they are anxious to escape after they are trapped in the cave and brainstorm different exit strategies. Ultimately, this emphasis on escape not only links the novel’s two major settings but also provides a meaningful dimension to its most pivotal scenes.
In the midst of their adolescence, the characters find themselves trapped by their very hometown: Nowhere, the novel’s primary setting. In Nowhere, the characters’ confinement is existential, characterized by pervasive economic hardship. For instance, Gus rates Nowhere as “number one in poverty, number one in high school dropouts, number one in least livability” (27). With such limited opportunities, residents like Gus feel “trapped,” and Gus admits that he would “leave if he could” (38). Predictably, the characters aspire to leave Nowhere and its misery behind. For Gus, escape manifests itself in academic rigor: He believes that his “only hope for getting out of Nowhere was to ace the SAT” (34), and he is already well prepared for the test. By contrast, Rossi’s aspirations center on racing, and she hopes to win a spot at Breaker’s Bradley’s camp, hone her skills, and “get out of Nowhere” (140), with Baja as a possible destination. Though markedly different, Gus’s and Rossi’s fantasies communicate a similar desperation: They want to escape Nowhere, and fast.
This anxiety is also dominant as the group navigates the cave: Following a disastrous cave in, the characters confront dead ends, narrow tunnels, and an “obstacle course of large boulders” (88). Trapped, the characters similarly prioritize escape, electing to abandon their hunt and “focus on getting out” (82). To that end, they pursue multiple leads: They chase the fleeing bats, squeeze through a narrow crevice, and follow an old riverbed, despite the associated risks. Though its challenges are less existential, the cave mirrors Nowhere in its oppressiveness, similarly taxing the characters with circumstances beyond their control. Indeed, just as the characters work to leave Nowhere, so, too, do they plot to escape the cave, thematically linking the novel’s two major settings.
The characters achieve both these goals, and the pursuit of escape—and its drama—heightens the novel’s major turning points. In the cave, the group shimmies through an opening and connects with Mayor Handsome, who replenishes their water supply and carts Jessie back to town. As they return to Nowhere, the group similarly realizes that escape from the town is within their reach: After winning the much-anticipated race, Rossi earns a spot at Breaker Bradley’s camp, while Gus, remembering the gold, promises that their financial troubles “will work out” (251). At the novel’s close, the characters have not only escaped the cave but also discovered opportunity, granting them a future beyond Nowhere’s poverty. Fittingly, the novel’s final scene echoes this sense of promise: Gazing into the “hazy distance” (260), Gus imagines fields afar, where it’s finally raining.
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