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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Erasure, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race and Identity
Familial Obligation vs. Personal Needs
Artistic Integrity vs. Commercial Success
Authenticity
Summary
Analysis
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, the diarist, is a writer of fiction. Monk has dark skin, curly hair, and “some of [his] ancestors were slaves.” He’s had unpleasant encounters with the police in several states. According to “society,” then, he’s Black. He also graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and comes from a family of doctors. Monk recalls a book agent at a party who once told him that he ought to stop “writing retellings of Euripides and parodies of French poststructuralists” and write novels about “the true, gritty real stories of black life.” Monk, for his part, hardly ever thinks about race. In fact, he doesn’t “believe in race.”
From the start, Erasure foregrounds Monk’s complicated relationship to race and racial identity. Although he claims not to “believe in race,” he does acknowledge (and resent) that society treats him differently due to his race. In this way, then, the novel gestures toward a distinction between race as an abstract construct and marker of difference (i.e., the sort of “race” that Monk doesn’t believe in) and race as a social construct (i.e., race not as a marker of difference, but as a justification for bigotry and inequality).
Themes
Now, Monk arrives in Washington to give a paper at a conference for the Nouveau Roman Society, not because he wants to but because it’s been a while since he visited home. Lisa, his older sister, didn’t offer to pick him up from the airport. Monk doesn’t think Lisa hates him, but she does seem to hold a grudge against him. She seems to think his life teaching college literature courses out in California is rather superficial compared to her work as a doctor, risking her life to deliver reproductive healthcare—including abortions—to low-income women. Monk’s older brother Bill is a plastic surgeon out in Scottsdale, Arizona. Monk hasn’t seen him in four years. Bill has a wife and two kids, though everyone knows he’s gay.
That Monk’s sister Lisa didn’t offer to pick him up from the airport, that Monk hasn’t been home in a while, and that he hasn’t seen his brother Bill in years all point to the strained nature of Monk’s family life. The reader doesn’t have many details about Monk’s family yet, but it seems clear that the family isn’t particularly close. What has caused this distance or whether things have always been this way remains yet unknown.
Themes
Monk checks into the Tabbard Inn, a B&B off Dupont Circle. After unpacking his things, he heads down to the lobby to call Lisa at her office. When she picks up, her voice is a mixture of disgruntled and bored. Lisa asks if Monk has visited their mother yet. When he says he hasn’t, she offers to pick him up and they can take Mother to dinner. Monk agrees.
Notably, Monk chooses to stay at a hotel rather than with family, reinforcing his strained, impersonal relationship to at least his mother and sister.
Themes
Lisa arrives an hour later in her luxury coupe. She tells Monk he’d better be ready for Mother, who is “a little weird these days.” Monk, taken aback, says Mother has always seemed fine on the phone. Lisa replies that you can’t tell much from a five-minute phone conversation. She explains that Mother has been forgetting things lately. Several months ago, she paid all the bills twice. Now, Lisa is the one paying the bills and taking care of everything else. Lorraine is still around, of course, “stealing little things here and there.”
Lisa’s euphemistic comment about Mother being “a little weird these days” seems to suggest that Mother is experiencing symptoms of cognitive decline or dementia. Her follow-up remark about how little one can discern from a five-minute phone call somewhat passive aggressively criticizes Monk for his lack of involvement in Mother’s care—with both of her brothers living on the opposite side of the country, it seems the majority of that care falls to Lisa.
Themes
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Monk and Lisa ask each other about their respective work. Lisa grumbles about the “anti-abortionist creeps” who protest outside her clinic. They frighten her—recently, in Maryland, a sniper shot a nurse through a clinic window. After a pause, Lisa breaks the silence to praise Monk for his intelligence—he understands complex things and thinks about them even though he doesn’t have to. Bill, meanwhile, is a smart guy and good enough “butcher,” but that’s still all he is: a butcher.
Lisa’s complaints about the “anti-abortion creeps” who protest outside her clinic, and the news story about the sniper who shot a nurse in nearby Maryland underscores the importance—and danger—of Lisa’s work. Although Monk isn’t a medical doctor like she is, Lisa seems to maintain a deep respect for him, nevertheless, since his work comes from a place of sincerity, good intent, and reverence for humanity—unlike Bill, who Lisa insinuates is dispassionate about his work (he’s a “butcher”) and only cares about money, not his patients.
Themes
Monk and Lisa arrive at Mother’s house, where Mother greets Monk warmly. Then she turns to Lisa and asks whether she and Barry are pregnant yet. Lisa, for the umpteenth time, reminds Mother that she’s divorced. While Mother gets ready for dinner, Monk peers around the house. He comments on the ashes in the fireplace. Later, when Lisa confronts Mother about the ashes, Mother absently explains that she burned some documents that Father wanted burned after his death. Lisa reminds her that Father died seven years ago.
Although Mother’s confused question to Lisa is clearly a symptom of her cognitive decline, it also hints at her unconscious favoritism toward Monk, which perhaps helps to explain some of Lisa’s bitterness. The reference to Father’s death sheds more light on the seemingly tense, unhappy characteristic of the Ellison family. Meanwhile, Mother’s casual mention of some personal papers Father wanted her to burn after his death hints at possible secrets in the family’s history, building intrigue for Monk and readers alike.
Themes
After a mostly uneventful dinner, Lisa drops Monk off at the B&B. In his room, he finds a message from Linda Mallory, an author and fellow professor he has had sex with twice. Monk calls Linda back. She’s staying at the Mayflower and invites him over for a drink. Monk reluctantly agrees to meet her at the hotel bar. Linda is a woman who says she “like[s] to fuck,” but Monk thinks she might like saying it more than doing it. What Monk really dislikes about Linda, though, is her lack of literary talent. She’s among a group of writers who wrote experimental fiction in the 1960s, only surviving by publishing one another’s work. These people comprise most of the Nouveau Roman Society. They hate Monk because he’s had moderate success.
Monk’s frank, somewhat insulting characterization of Linda points to the performed, shifting nature of identity—he’s suggesting that Linda has cultivated an outer persona for herself (as someone who “like[s] to fuck”) that doesn’t necessarily align with her true character, even if she herself fails to recognize this discrepancy. The fluid, constructed nature of a person’s self-image and the self they project to the world will become important to Monk’s own character development, particularly when it comes to race and racial identity.
Themes
Monk meets Linda at the Mayflower. They talk shop, and Monk complains about the panel and the people on it. Linda unsubtly asks if Monk would like to go up to her room. Monk somewhat gracelessly shrugs off the question and returns to his own hotel after one drink.
Monk’s complaints about the publishing industry and the people in his field point to his dissatisfaction with his work. He doesn’t say so explicitly here, but frustration could stem from publishers’ criticism of Monk’s work as not “Black enough.” Monk’s rejection of Linda’s offer of sex hints at his more general sense of alienation.
Themes
