Ship Breaker Themes

Ship Breaker takes place in a highly divisive society. Whether within the micro-society on Bright Sands Beach (Lucky Strike is at the top of the heap, Sloth at the bottom) or the greater global soc...

No matter how we look at it, loyalty and betrayal permeate Ship Breaker. It's pretty easy to see that Nailer is a loyal person—to Pima, to Nita, to everyone but his father, who is his blood. Tool...

There are tons of pithy sayings about family: Blood is thicker than water, home is where the heart is, blah blah blah. None of these is true in Ship Breaker, however. Family is a far more complex c...

In Ship Breaker, might very often makes right; just look at Bapi, Lucky Strike, Richard Lopez, and Pyce. Violence can be classified into two broad categories: Violence with purpose, and violence fo...

Nailer thinks that perhaps each life is worth something. Sadna recognizes that killing takes away a piece of a person's humanity. Tool believes that humanity isn't defined by genetics and that the...

Fate isn't just predetermination or destiny in Ship Breaker. It takes on tones of religiosity, especially we see how ship breakers invoke the Fates as religious beings and when characters make offe...

In Ship Breaker, nature is not the benevolent Mother Nature that we often see in Earth Day posters, and instead it's almost an antagonistic force. There are storms called city killers that have rav...

Gimme gimme gimme… It may seem childish, but greed is pretty major player in the lives of several characters in Ship Breaker. It isn't just limited to the rich folks on top, though. Since money i...