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Scene 6
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Betrayal, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love, Jealousy and Betrayal
Time, Perspective, and Identity
Literature and Integrity
Responsibility and Consequences
Summary
Analysis
Later that same summer (1973), Jerry and Robert are eating lunch at an Italian restaurant. Jerry uncharacteristically drinks scotch at lunch to quell his stomach bug. The bug likewise allows him to deflect Robert’s invitation to play squash.
The two share a comic exchange about whether their waiter is the usual one they remember or his son. As they’re catching up, Jerry starts to tell Robert about his son’s bike accident but stops himself. Jerry asks Robert about his trip to Venice. Robert says his excursion by himself to Torcello, by speedboat, was the highlight of the trip. On the island, he read Yeats at dawn.
Jerry and Robert’s humorous exchange recalls their banter in Scene 4: once again, a farcical nod to Freudian notions (in this case, the Oedipal pattern of sons replacing their fathers) hints at real paternal anxieties in both men—Robert over his son’s paternity, and Jerry over his poor fathering due to prioritizing his affair above his domestic responsibilities. Robert’s Torcello anecdote must now make Jerry aware that Emma lied to him about the speedboat strike, but he can’t yet know why.
Themes
The subject of Spinks’s book comes up. Robert, drunk by this point, begins to grumble about his job as a publisher, expressing his disgust with modern novels and the publicity and commerce surrounding them. Somewhat caustically, he alleges that a love for modern novels is what Jerry and Emma have in common.
Drunk and depressed, Robert says he’s upset to be back in London. He claims that his morning reading on Torcello was the only moment of happiness for him in a long time. He then composes himself and tries to reassure Jerry (and himself) that everything is fine with his marriage and that he’s proud of both his and Jerry’s careers. He invites Jerry for a drink sometime, saying Emma would love to see him.
Robert’s love for canonical great literature is no put-on: here, he reveals (to the audience, but not to Jerry) how it gave him solace in the horrible situation of finding out that his wife was having an affair with his oldest friend. Nevertheless, his passion plays into his broader refusal to deal with the present, as he ends the scene by lying to himself about all his current problems.
Themes
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