Maniac Magee - Themes

Themes

Jeffrey Lionel Magee struggles to find identity throughout the story, even as he grows into a legend as Maniac Magee. The standard identifiers of name, race and place of residence seem not to apply permanently to him.

Maniac insists to anyone who asks that his name is Jeffrey, since he was afraid of losing his name, and with it the only thing he had left from his mother and father. Mrs. Beale assures him that "You'll be nothing but Jeffrey in here. But … out there, I don’t know.". The theme of names and nicknames is extended with Mars Bar, whose moniker stems from the candy bars he constantly eats, and whose fame has spread across both Ends of town.

Race and racism play a prominent role in the story, with Maniac drawn as a neutral observer with the inability to see "black" and "white." He observes to himself that East Enders are "...gingersnap and light fudge and dark fudge and acorn and butter rum and cinnamon and burnt orange. But never licorice, which, to him, was real black.", and that he himself has "...at least seven shades of color right on his own skin, not one of them being what he would call white (except for his eyeballs, which weren't any whiter than the eyeballs of the kids in the East End)". During a summer block party, an old East Ender complains to Maniac, "You got your own kind. It’s how you wanted it. Let’s keep it that way. NOW MOVE ON. Your kind’s waitin' up there !"

Homes and homelessness are consistent themes in the novel. At Grayson's house, Maniac is comforted by having an address, and he later paints a "one oh one" (101) on the bandshell for the same purpose. Jeffrey even finds a home in the buffalo pen, where he shows affection to the buffalo calf and its mother, who show concern in return.