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My Pafology: Ate
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
Go walks up the next morning and heads over to the pool hall. He climbs in through the back window and falls asleep in one of the stalls. He wakes up later and finds Tito and Yellow there. They’ve seen Go’s TV appearance and tell him the police are looking for him—the Korean man’s murder was caught on the security camera. Go threatens Fat Man, who runs the pool hall, with his pistol and orders him to give him his car. Fat Man yields, and Go runs off with the keys.
The pool hall setting is another reference to Richard Wright’s Native Son, the novel whose plot My Pafology most closely parodies—in that novel, the protagonist (Bigger Thomas) convenes with his friends at the pool hall. Tension builds as Go continues to evade the police—it seems unlikely at this point (and perhaps has seemed unlikely from the start) that things will end well for Van Go Jenkins.
Themes
