55 pages • 1 hour read
LeAnne HoweMiko Kings
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Spider
One of the recurring symbols in Miko Kings is the spider. In the book, the spider is typically described as female and is specifically symbolic of the different characters’ female lovers. The first time it is mentioned is in the nursing home where Hope lives in 1969. He opens his eyes and sees “[a] spider [walk] across the flat surface of the wall. They’re roommates and he’s comforted by her presence” (49). When Hope looks at the spider, it typically precedes or follows a memory of Justina.
Another time the spider is mentioned in Hope’s nursing home is after his conversation with Kerwin. As he drifts back to sleep, he starts remembering Justina again. He glances over and sees the spider “quietly spinning her silk threads into a baseball diamond in the corner of the dugout. By candlelight he can see her mourning the death of her lover” (67). This particular image of the spider also pays homage to Justina’s sewing skills. In the last chapter, Ezol wears a scarf that she “and Justina took turns embroidering. [Ezol] wore it to the very first game of the Twin Territories Series” (219). For Hope, the spider takes on all of these traits of Justina, from her gentleness with him to her hobbies.
The symbol of the spider isn’t always a gentle one, however. Blip Bleen associates the spider with a different woman: Cora. The night of the affair, “Blip doesn’t know what came over him. She worked that spider magic of hers on him and he couldn’t seem to push her away” (196). Instead of feeling comforted, this comparison of a woman to a spider is rooted in malicious intent. This underscores the shifting dynamics between the characters in the book and the way that, ultimately, the female lovers end up separated from those they love.
Songs
In Miko Kings, songs are a motif that supports all three of the themes explored in this guide. They are utilized to preserve an accurate history, are integral to the intersection of Indigenous identity and baseball, and are tied into the connection between land and identity.
Songs are one of the primary ways the legend of Black Juice has lived on for so long. When Algernon arrives to interview Justina, he asks if she knows about these songs and if he will let her sing one for him. Justina agrees, and Algernon sings,
Black Juice
Black Juice
The beautiful and the terrible
Martyr of hope
Bring us your potion
Teach us a notion
Or two,
We’ll blow the white house down in slow motion (72).
This song, however, is not an accurate portrayal of Justina and not how she wants to be remembered. To correct the public image of her story, she agrees to continue meeting with Algernon. While Algernon eventually forgoes his project for a relationship with Evangeline, his recordings are useful to Lena and Ezol, who write about her in their own book.
Songs are an important aspect of baseball as well. In addition to songs that are sung at the games themselves, there are songs that also tell the history of the ancient game. Hope tells the warrior spirit who comes to visit at the end of his life, “I could sing the names of all the exalted towns in our homelands where the games had been played” (190). Songs and baseball have been interwoven for centuries, and the importance of both to Indigenous Americans has never waned.
Finally, songs connect to the theme of identity and the land one calls home. Lena recalls her summers in Oklahoma with her grandmother. She says,
Often, on these excursions [Grandmother] would dip her hands in pond water and pat me down from head to toe, all the while singing the ‘cool off song,’ not a tuneful melody, but more of a chant. Grandmother said her song was to prevent a fire from growing in my belly (18).
The cool off is a balm for the grief that is connected to the family on the land. The song combined with nature from home is used to encapsulate the resentment that Cora feels toward Lena.
The Eye Tree
Another motif that is present throughout Miko Kings is the eye tree, which Ezol draws in her journal. From childhood and into her adult life, Ezol returns to the eye tree when she is investigating her theories of Choctaw time. After reading Ezol’s journal, Lena says,
I study the picture of her eye tree. […] Normally cataracts would have blurred her vision not enhanced it, as the drawing suggests. The eyes almost look like seven angry fish. When I look up ‘cataract’ in the dictionary I find it means floodgate (of heaven). A large waterfall or any strong flood or rush of water; a deluge (185).
The eye tee is associated with Ezol herself and her ability to see the world in terms of mathematical equations. She has multiple perspectives on time and space, just as there are multiple eyes (and therefore more clarity) on the tree. Even as a child, when she writes about the equation 1+1=4, she briefly mentions that her teacher corrected her and told her to stop talking about the eye tree.
Finally, when Ezol dies in the fire, the image of the eye tree comes to her. She says, “I see the glowing red. The trunk of the eye tree is on fire, its limbs detach from my body and I am truly burning up. Sweat…no, perhaps bleeding from infinite wounds” (209). The eye tree burns when she does, but the perspective she has on time and space also gives her a better perspective on her death. She dies much more peacefully than Cora, whose primary flaw is her limited perspective.
