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The Anatomy Lesson: Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On Beauty, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Nature of Beauty
Politics in Academia
Race and Identity
The Value of Family
Summary
Analysis
Howard always brings a projector for his first presentation of the school year. He has a teaching assistant named Smith J. Miller helping him. Smith tries to convince Howard that PowerPoint is easier than a projector, but Howard believes in the projector, even though it’s old and finnicky.
Howard heard that Kiki told Warren about Claire and Howard’s affair. Warren and Claire are still together, but Howard thinks all of his colleagues must know about the affair by now. Just as Smith is putting up a poster of a Rembrandt painting on the blackboard, Zora walks by the room without noticing them. Smith tells Howard what a good student she is.
It’s unclear whether Howard is exaggerating his reputation around campus (by imagining people gossiping about him) or if he is simply being accurate about how small communities like college campuses encourage gossip—both possibilities are plausible. In any case, Howard’s concerns show how an academic career unavoidably mixes some of the personal with the professional.
Themes
In the dean’s office, Zora tells Dean French that she believes she is being kept out of Claire’s poetry class because of the fallout from Claire’s affair with Howard. Dean French gets concerned as soon as Zora uses the word “inappropriate” to describe her exclusion from the class. After hearing Zora’s case, Dean French knows there’s nothing he can do to stop her, so he offers to speak to Claire personally to avoid getting an advisory board involved.
Continuing the theme of the academic blending with the personal, Zora seems to be attempting to use her father’s affair for her own academic gain. “Inappropriate” is a word that is both loaded with meaning but also vague enough to suggest a variety of offenses—of varying levels of seriousness. Zora is using the word as a threat against Claire, suggesting that she’ll accuse Claire of misconduct if Claire doesn’t let Zora in her class. Zora’s use of the word suggests that in some ways she may be more strategic than Howard—he sometimes makes awkward sexual comments, but Zora knows exactly how to hint at sex (Howard’s affair with Claire) without actually saying anything offensive.
Themes
Dean French asks Zora what other courses she’s taking, and Zora mentions that she’s attending one of Monty’s lectures, because although she’s not conservative like him, she believes it’s important to “know thy enemy.”
Zora’s language about knowing her enemy (which comes from a translation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War) suggests how seriously she takes education—perhaps even too seriously if she’s comparing it to warfare.
Themes
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Dean French calls his assistant Lydia and asks her to contact Claire, but Lydia says Claire can be hard to track down. Lydia is highly organized and doesn’t understand how disorganized people like Claire can succeed. Just then, Lydia sees Claire run by her office and warns Dean French that she’ll soon run by his. Dean French catches her for a conversation.
The contrast between Claire and Lydia illustrates the role that privilege plays on a college campus. Claire is (or at least was) a famous poet, and her early successes have allowed her to coast through her later career in a disorganized way. By contrast, Lydia seems to come from a less privileged background than Claire (or the dean), and as a result, she needs to be much more organized, just to succeed in a role for which she receives minimal recognition.
Themes
Dean French takes a long time to get to the point and doesn’t even bring up Zora at first. Meanwhile, Claire shows him a copy of her old poetry book from 1972 that she’s copying a poem from for class. She shows him a poem called “On Beauty” which is written in the style of a pantoum, a style of verse that was originally Malay but later used by Victor Hugo. Finally, Dean French mentions that he sent someone over to Claire’s classroom to cover for her because he needs to have a conversation with her.
While Claire is a fictional poet, the pantoum and Victor Hugo are both real parts of literary history. Hugo is a French author who wrote poetry but is perhaps even better known for his novels, which include Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Although there’s ample room for doubt about whether present-day Claire is still a good poet, “On Beauty” (which gets transcribed in full here) is presumably supposed to show that Claire used to be talented—particularly since “On Beauty” is actually a poem by Zadie Smith’s husband, Nick Laird, who had already published the poem under his own name.
Themes
