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Crossing: Hornsey Lane
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in NW, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Class Identity and Social Mobility
Geography and Human Connection
Sex and Relationships
Altruism
Summary
Analysis
Natalie wakes up the next morning beside Frank and is surprised to somehow be in the exact same position where she found herself the previous day. Early on Monday, Natalie left an envelope on Frank’s pillow, but he put it aside and still hasn’t opened it. She asks if he ever will, but he says that “confessions are self-serving.”
Natalie’s unchanging physical position suggests how her position in life also hasn’t changed, in spite of everything that happened to her the previous night. The note that she left Frank may in fact be a suicide note, but his refusal to read it shows how much he refuses to understand her.
Themes
Natalie gets dressed and finds her children. They’re wearing their costumes for the carnival Monday night: Naomi is dressed as a robot, and Spike is dressed as a robot dog. Natalie tries to convince them to change into normal clothes, but neither wants to. As they go out, Natalie imagines what it would be like if she were to get divorced and another family were to move into their home. They go to the store, where the children pick random things they want to buy. Natalie also picks up a newspaper that mentions an Albert Road murder.
Natalie’s children often reflect her own fears, and in this case, their robot costumes, which she disapproves of, seem to reflect her fear that she is becoming a “robot” who just conforms to the expectations of her social class and the people who inhabit it. While divorce can be frightening to contemplate, for Natalie it almost becomes a type of fantasy about how her divorce might clear the way for another family to succeed.
Themes
Natalie, Naomi, and Spike have extra time before the carnival, so they walk into a pet store. Natalie keeping thinking of the newspaper and its picture of a Rasta man holding up a picture of his adult son. She reads the article and learns about Felix’s life. As she looks up, she realizes her children are gone. She panics looking for them, only to realize they’re over by the rabbit hutch.
Although Natalie sometimes struggles with how to feel about her children, this moment when she nearly loses them helps to remind her how important the children are to her. Natalie never met Felix, and yet as a parent, she relates to the grief that Lloyd (the Rasta man) feels in the newspaper photo.
Themes
Just then, Natalie gets a phone call from Michel. Apparently, Leah is just lying out in the sun and won’t speak to him. He asked her what’s wrong, and she just pointed him to a drawer where she keeps all her contraceptives. Michel thinks things haven’t been the same since Olive died. Natalie tries to reassure Michel that Leah still loves him even if she doesn’t want to have a baby. Natalie feels that the best thing she can do for Michel is provide certainty and clarity.
For a fair-skinned person like Leah, lying in the direct sun is often associated with skin cancer. In a way, this makes Leah’s kind of suicidal, in another parallel between her life and Natalie’s. Like Natalie, Leah also faces a seemingly impossible situation after her husband learns the truth about what she really wants in life.
Themes
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Natalie, Naomi, and Spike take the 98 bus to Leah and Michel’s place. Michel wonders to Natalie whether the solution is to get a new dog to replace Olive. Natalie leaves her kids with Michel while she goes out to talk to Leah, who is still in the yard, fully exposed to the sun as she lies in the hammock.
Michel’s focus on a new dog shows how even after learning his wife’s big secret, he still gets too caught up on surface-level details to understand her. Leah’s full exposure to the sun perhaps also represents how her big secret about not wanting to become pregnant is now out in the open.
Themes
Natalie tries to give Leah the same clarity she gave Michel, using old cliches about how love conquers all. Leah doesn’t stop her, but she also doesn’t seem to be listening. In the middle of the conversation, Spike starts running over to Natalie, crying, and she picks him up. Leah thinks that holding Spike, Natalie looks like the Madonna.
Given her own marriage difficulties, Natalie knows better than the advice she’s Leah, and yet without knowing how to solve her own problems, she doesn’t know what else to say. Leah, however, can’t see past her idealized image of Natalie (who is like a “Madonna”)—she does not realize that Natalie’s struggles are similar to her own.
Themes
Natalie thinks maybe she can get through to Leah if she divulges a secret of her own. But a part of her is too focused on self-preservation to ever do that. Natalie says that there has to be something deeper wrong with Leah—she can’t be so upset just over the issue of the baby.
Natalie recognizes that maintaining a relationship involves reciprocity and honesty, and yet she has been so eager to project an image of success that she doesn’t know how to be more vulnerable. She and Leah started drifting apart when they stopped being open with each other.
Themes
Leah finally opens up and says she doesn’t understand why she has the life she does. She wonders why her life is so much better than the man who died on Albert Road. Natalie says it’s because she and Leah worked harder and smarter than other people. Nathan, for example, didn’t want a better life. Natalie believes that the difficult truth is that people get what they deserve.
Natalie’s words here about people working hard and getting what they deserve echo what Frank has always told her (and what she often resisted accepting). The novel has proven that this philosophy is wrong—that Frank in fact didn’t work very hard at all to succeed, while someone like Felix did work hard, only to experience extreme misfortune. Natalie’s acceptance of Frank’s philosophy is sad because it shows how she has given up on her old self and fully accepted his views of the world.
Themes
Natalie reminds Leah of all the good things she has, like her husband, her job, and her family and friends. Leah wants to talk about something else. Just then, Michel comes over to check in and pour wine for them. Natalie admits that she thinks she knows what happened on Albert Road.
Natalie’s admission that she knows about the Albert Road stabbing seems to be a sign that may finally be ready to stop keeping secrets from others, but the final passage of the novel complicates this triumphant interpretation.
Themes
Natalie and Leah email a police website and then decide they should also call the station. Leah says that Nathan seems like a person of interest in relation to the Albert Road incident, and Natalie agrees that calling in seems like the right thing to do. As they prepare to make the call, Natalie feels like it’s back in the day when she and Leah used to make calls to boys they liked. Although Natalie feels like she is the one who dials the phone number, she feels like “Keisha” is the one who does the talking. She uses her old voice, but it sounds like a disguise.
While there are some uplifting elements to this ending, including Natalie and Leah finally finding a way to reconnect as they did when they were teenagers, ultimately the story ends on an ambiguous note. Natalie and Leah have both resigned themselves to accepting their places in society, showing their trust in the status quo by leaving it everything up to the police. The ending keeps Nathan at a distance, showing how people like Natalie and Leah, who face real challenges in their lives, can nevertheless also be guilty of helping perpetuate a system that keeps people like Nathan from rising above the circumstances into which he was born.
Themes
