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Visitation: Chapter 14
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
On a bus ride, Leah still thinks about Shar and about how at her job there are leaflets about how there is only so much you can do for an “addict” before it’s time for them “to make their own decisions.” She stops at a building marked number 37. There, she pushes some leaflets through the door.
The advice in the pamphlets that Leah finds at her job seems to align with Michel and Pauline’s attitude about addiction: that it’s a personal choice. Leah clearly feels conflicted, with her guilt about Shar’s condition motivating her to act. On the other hand, the way she chooses to “help” Shar—by anonymously dropping off some pamphlets suggests—that she is perhaps acting out of a need to ease her own conscience more than a desire to help Shar in a meaningful, effective way.
Themes
