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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Erasure, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race and Identity
Familial Obligation vs. Personal Needs
Artistic Integrity vs. Commercial Success
Authenticity
Summary
Analysis
Lorraine is spending the night at Maynard’s to prepare for the wedding, so Mother’s care falls to Monk. This morning is particularly difficult. Mother recognizes Monk and herself, but she’s forgotten how to dress herself. Later, when they arrive at Maynard’s house for the wedding, Monk feels a twinge of guilt upon realizing that everything has, in a sense, gone exactly according to plan: he has gotten rid of Lorraine so that he can put Mother away in a home and move on with his life.
With the moral, financial issues of what to do with Lorraine and Mother all but solved, Monk is free to move on with his life, even if he hasn’t resolved the personal, identity-focused conflicts these issues have inspired in him. He can leave the discovery about his father unresolved and his own personal hang ups about race and racial identity in the past, if he wants. Whether he will continue to examine these issues or will choose to repress them, as he has arguably done his whole life, remains to be seen.
Themes
Maynard’s house is chaotic, full of clashing personalities and opinions. Maynard’s daughter, for one, can’t stand Lorraine. Monk chats with Maynard’s son-in-law, Leon, who treats Monk judgmentally when he learns that Lorraine is Monk’s family’s “servant.” He asks if the family is rich. Monk answers no, but when he admits that he is taking unpaid time off work and not worried about money, Leon says that means Monk is rich. When Leon bluntly asks Monk, “So, what kind of wedding present you gonna give your servant?” Monk suddenly replies that he’s giving Lorraine $10,000. Leon says nothing but goes across the room to whisper something to his wife. Suddenly, the atmosphere is one of joy.
The resolution to this awkward scene between Monk and Maynard’s son-in-law—Monk essentially throws the promise of money at Lorraine’s future in-laws to settle a tense moment—points to how people can use money and status to settle personal and interpersonal issues rather than confront and learn from them. Monk is able to do this more easily now that he has money from his book deal.
Themes
Monk’s thoughts drift back to a memory of the day Father announced his own father’s death. Lisa and Bill break down in grief. Monk is 10 and too young to really understand enough to cry. At dinner that night, Lorraine asks if Father wants her to say a prayer, and Father replies bluntly, “Hell no.” After Lorraine is gone, Father tells the kids not to let grief push them toward a superstitious belief in God. Grandfather had not been “afraid of the dark,” and neither should the children. After a while, Mother, who has been noticeably silent, finally says, “This is not about you.”
Mother is criticizing Father for using this superficially stoic speech about his own father’s condemnation of religion and superstition to elevate himself and his own beliefs. Although Father presents his words as advice to his children about staying strong in the face of grief, he’s really just using his father’s passing as an opportunity to selfishly validate and enforce his own beliefs. That Monk thinks of this memory now signals that he is continuing to question the high pedestal on which he has held his father (and the man’s values and tastes) all these years, and by extension, to question how his (Monk’s) embrace of these views may have affected his character negatively. Are Monk’s own high tastes and so-called morals just a display of egoism and self-indulgence?
Themes
Back in the present, Mother snaps in the middle of the wedding. She calls Lorraine a “golddigger” and calls the guests “thugs.” Lorraine is crying now. Monk apologizes to everyone, explaining that Mother is sick. Then he runs off to the bathroom, where Mother has bolted herself inside. He breaks down the door and carries her away from the house before the ceremony can begin. Later that day, Lorraine stops by the Ellison house to collect her things. She’s angry still and refuses to speak to Mother. To Monk, she mutters, “This is the thanks I get.” Monk hands Lorraine an envelope containing the $10,000. Later, Monk calls Bill to tell him he’s going to have Mother committed the next day. Bill says he’ll fly out.
Mother’s outburst makes it clear to Monk that he cannot procrastinate admitting her to a facility any longer. Although Mother’s disease is in part to blame for the specific insults she hurls against Lorraine, her words also point to the internalized racism and self-hatred she continues to hold inside herself after years of being made to feel inferior in her marriage. The ugliness of Mother’s outburst shows Monk the ugliness of his father’s elitism and internalized racism—sentiments Monk himself has internalized, even if doesn’t consciously recognize them as such.
Themes
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