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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Reckoning, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Guilt and Legacy
Morality, Survival, and Perspective
Sexuality and Shame
Body Image and Publicity
Indifference vs. Feeling
Summary
Analysis
Magda never met Peter’s parents, Mieczysław and Jadwiga Szubański, who had been born in Warsaw in 1894. Mieczysław was a policeman, but he left the police force because of its corruption—an act that demonstrated the moral character that Peter admired in him. Jadwiga ran several small general stores. Zbigniew (Peter) was named after a first son who died young, and he had a sister, Danuta. Jadwiga and Mieczysław showed amazing courage by sheltering Jews when the penalty for doing so was death. Peter used to describe Warsaw before the war as the “Paris of the East.” Magda interprets this as her father’s lament for the Warsaw that was lost, and as the plea of an exile for inclusion with the rest of the world.
When it comes to understanding her father’s past, Magda is groping in the dark. Not only are Mieczysław and Jadwiga dead, but the war destroyed old Poland. With no recourse to the pre-war character of her father or his home, Magda struggles to understand the scope of the damage the war caused. Peter’s comparison of pre-war Warsaw to Paris, a famously cosmopolitan city, attempts to convey the extent of the devastation Warsaw experienced as a result of the war.
Themes
Luckily, Magda has many photographs of her Polish family today—in some, they’re dressed up in the city, and in others, they’re vacationing in the country. In one, the family is gathered in a small boat, the women’s large bodies spilling out of their swimsuits. Magda looks a lot like Jadwiga and Peter. Mieczysław had stern, Slavic features. He had a tattoo of an eagle on his barrel-chest, the arrogance of which he later regretted. Although Peter never spoke badly of his father, Magda blames Mieczysław for Peter’s difficult qualities; by contrast, Jadwiga is kind, plump, and jolly in pictures.
Although she never met nor even grew up under the same conditions as her grandmother, Magda and Jadwiga bear a striking physical resemblance. This resemblance suggests that one can inherit other things from their ancestors, such as character, trauma, and memories.
Themes
On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. At the time, 15-year-old Peter was bedridden with typhoid. At first, Peter liked going to the top of his apartment building to watch the German and Polish planes fight. Then one day, a bomb exploded close to Peter, and a victim’s leg was flung at his feet. Thousands of Poles fled, including the Polish government and army leader. Because of its location, Poland had been invaded countless times in the past. Hardened by this history, Peter’s family stayed in Warsaw while the Germans bombed the city. Soon, the family was starving; Peter went into the countryside to look for food and found only dead bodies. Then, Stalin broke his pact with the Allies and invaded Poland, trapping the Polish refugees and killing hundreds of thousands.
This snapshot shows the development of Peter’s family’s emotional response as the violence of war went from distant and occasional to constant threat. When the threat of violence only manifests as distant planes, it is a spectacle to Peter; it is not until he sees a dead body that the violence is terrifying and real. Soon, however, violence is so constant that the family—seemingly weary of being afraid—starts to become immune to it. In this way, survivors of war are not indifferent because they are heartless but rather because they’ve been forcefully conditioned to it accept it as part of daily life.
Themes
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When the German occupation of Poland began, Peter founded a private army to weaken German forces however he could. In 1943, Peter’s brother-in-law, Andrzej, recruited him to a Polish execution squad. Peter’s unit, Unit 993/W, answered to the Polish Underground Army, and assassinated Gestapo members and Polish traitors. History books eventually printed pictures of Peter’s unit members, men and women whose courage and friendship Peter admired. Unit 993/W tracked traitors, listed their offenses, and shot them. Of Peter’s 12 assassinations, several were former friends and famous Polish people. Meanwhile, Peter’s family hid in their apartment a Jewish boy who would not keep quiet; Magda suspects this led to her father’s impatience with childish behavior.
Peter’s attitude toward the Jewish boy is in line with his training for Unit 933/W, which replaced Peter’s former loyalties with new ones. Loyalty to friendship, origin, and culture were replaced by loyalty to bravery: if a person could not overcome weakness and fear, then they were a threat—and therefore one of Peter’s targets. This shift in loyalty was not merely a strategy to survive the war, but rather a mode Peter would use to assess people for the rest of his life. In this way, his coping mechanisms became character traits.
Themes
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In 1944, Germany defeated Poland in the Warsaw Uprising. Two hundred thousand Poles were killed while others were raped and tortured. Peter survived by escaping the city through a sewer pipe. The Soviets, who had urged Poland to fight, watched from the sidelines. Furious at Poland’s defense, Hitler razed Warsaw. Nazis carted Peter’s family to Szczecin, northwest of Warsaw. Peter was sent to Prisoner of War camps. Eventually he fled to Scotland, where he began training to parachute back into Poland; he never saw his parents again.
Symbolically, the sewer pipe through which Peter crawled to safety illustrates how the Warsaw Uprising reduced Peter’s life to refuse—his family and his city were suddenly gone, and he became a prisoner. Furthermore, the sewer pipe points out the extent of the destruction Poland incurred during the Warsaw Uprising: the city was gutted down to its plumbing.
Themes
Peter never cried about the war. However, as Peter neared death, long-trapped emotions erupted from him: he lamented that he never grieved his parents and that his father never told Peter that he loved him. Magda wonders what it is like when one’s home is war. Peter often mused over the choices that people had to make during the war. Magda wonders what she would choose, and if she has Peter’s capacity for violence. Margaret wants Magda to stop calling Peter an assassin, but Magda reminds her that Peter described himself that way.
Magda’s questions about Peter’s character are always simultaneously questions about herself. However, the different circumstances of their lives prevents Magda from seeing how similar she is to Peter. The more Magda learns about Peter’s past, the more she wonders how she’d act under similarly trying circumstances.
Themes
