Content Warning: This section of the guide includes mentions of child abduction, abuse, sexual assault, predatory behavior, mental illness, violence against women, domestic violence, abortion, and suicide.

Throughout the novel, pirates serve as a symbol of Patch’s identity and sense of self. As a child, his mother begins his obsession: “[H]e was into pirates because he had been born with only one eye, and his mother peddled the romance of a cutlass and eye patch because often for kids like him the flair of fiction dulled a reality too severe” (3). His mother calls him her “little pirate” and sews eyepatches for him, hoping that the excitement of the stories will bring him joy. Patch latches onto these ideas and insists that he is a pirate, looking to stories of historical pirates for inspiration and courage. Though kids at school mock him for his eyepatch and his obsession, Saint joins him in making up stories. After his kidnapping, Patch is no longer interested in childish games, and Saint longs for him to care about his old interests: “She wanted him to be a pirate once more” (163). However, The Lasting Effects of Trauma have begun to take root, changing Patch into someone who no longer experiences the world with childlike wonder.