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Chapter 21
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Anxious People, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Parenting and Fear
Marriage, Conflict, and Communication
Mental Health and Connection
The Modern World
Assumptions
Summary
Analysis
Standing in the apartment doorway, the bank robber tries really hard to not point the pistol at anyone, but they accidentally point it at a woman named Zara. Zara is in her 50s and beautifully dressed—she’s clearly rich. But oddly, Zara isn’t afraid to have a pistol pointed at her. Other people in the apartment are terrified. One woman shrieks that they’re being robbed, which isn’t true; the robber didn’t intend for this to be a robbery. So the robber feels insulted when the woman tells her husband, Roger, to get his money out. The bank robber then catches sight of the reflection in the window. Everyone reflected back is afraid, but the robber is clearly the most frightened. The robber realizes they, not the others, are the real captive here. Sirens sound below.
The bank robber doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and their terror and hopelessness is palpable in this chapter. Nobody understands their intentions (they’re just trying to escape their actual attempted robbery), and it becomes abundantly clear that they’re trapped now. By this, the robber means that they’ve gotten in way deeper than they intended. Now, when the police finally catch them, they’ll be guilty of trying to rob a bank and taking people hostage—crimes they genuinely have little interest in committing.
Themes
