The Eleventh Plague
By Jeff Hirsch
Theme One : Have faith in humanity because sometimes people aren't as bad as they seem.
If Steven and his father wouldn't have messed with the "slaver's" his father wouldn't have been injured. They wouldn't have ever been running from then and his father never would have fallen into the canyon and went into a coma. The same people that they were chased off by were the ones that helped them. They take them in and accept them into their community and care for them.
Theme Two: Doing things out of spite can cause a lot of harm.
Steven met a girl named Jenny and he liked her and when he saw her getting picked on, he socked the kid. Jenny and Steven were ousted and he found her living in an abandoned barn. They sneak back into the camp and light of fireworks near the cattle of one of the residents and the cattle run off. The town thinks that it's the doings of a nearby slaving city so they declare war on each other.
Relating the Themes
These themes kind of relate. If you don't like someone that you don't know for no reason you might do something that you may later regret and it may cause unrest in your future relationship. Like when Steven and his father tried to steal the slavers vehicle and freed their slaves, just because they didn't like what they were doing they jeopardized his fathers well being.