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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret., which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Puberty
Friendship, Fitting In, and Social Pressure
Religion
Family Conflict
Summary
Analysis
Early in December, Grandma goes on a three-week Caribbean cruise, which she does every year. Before she leaves, she holds a going-away party in her room on the ship. This is the first year that Margaret gets to attend. Mom gives Grandma a jewelry box, and Grandma makes sure to point out that her jewelry will all eventually go to Margaret. Margaret hates it when Grandma talks like this—Grandma likes to mention that she’s already made her funeral arrangements. But after the party, Grandma promises to bring Margaret on the cruise with her one day.
It's a mark of Margaret’s growing maturity that she’s finally allowed to attend Grandma’s going-away party. However much Margaret is happy to attend, though, she’s still understandably uncomfortable confronting the fact that she and everyone around her is getting older. This is why she’s so upset about Grandma mentioning her eventual death.
Themes
The week after, Mom starts addressing her Christmas cards. She calls them “Holiday greetings” since the family doesn’t really celebrate Christmas; giving gifts, according to Mom and Dad, is just “a traditional American custom.” Dad says that the cards are about Mom’s childhood, since she sends them back to her childhood friends and her brother, who lives in California. This year, though, Margaret discovers something odd: Mom is sending a card to her parents in Ohio. Margaret doesn’t let on that she knows; she’s pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to find out.
Mom and Dad seem to go to great lengths to make a traditionally religious holiday secular for Margaret’s sake. When Margaret discovers the card meant for Mom’s parents, it suggests that Mom is interested in trying to improve her relationship with them. In a mark of maturity, Margaret shows Mom respect and trust by not mentioning the card—she gives Mom some cover and keeps her secret.
Themes
The entire school is involved in a Christmas-Hanukkah pageant. The sixth-grade class is the choir, so they practice singing daily. They learn three Hanukkah songs and five Christmas carols, and the PTA decides to buy new green choir robes. The class practices walking down the halls singing “Adeste Fedelis” in two lines, one of girls and one of boys. Margaret walks behind Janie and next to Norman Fishbein, whom she ignores. A week before the pageant, several kids refuse to sing some of the songs because the songs are against their religion.
The fact that some kids refuse to sing songs that are “against their religion” shows just how essential religion is to people’s identities in Farbrook. In particular, this suggests that it’s important for these kids to define themselves as being against religions that aren’t their own. This starts to cast religion as something exclusionary.
Themes
Margaret lets God know that she’s paying close attention to Christmas and Hanukkah this year, but so far, she hasn’t decided if one is more meaningful to her than the other. The new choir robes arrive the day before the pageant. The pageant is fun, especially since the sixth graders get to sit in the choir seats right behind the kindergarteners. One little boy wets himself in front of Janie, and Janie struggles to not laugh. Winter vacation begins right after the pageant—and when Margaret gets home after the pageant, Mom shares that Margaret has a letter.
For Margaret, the winter holidays are a chance for her to engage in deep thought about her religious identity—what holidays a person celebrates can, after all, help explain who a person is and what they value. However, when Margaret has so much fun at the pageant, it implies that perhaps she doesn’t actually have to choose one holiday over the other—she’s clearly getting a lot out of both.
Themes
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