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Chapter 10
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
Mother’s state of mind continues to deteriorate. Meanwhile, a romance buds between Maynard and Lorraine. Monk continues to see Marilyn. One day, he knocks on her door and a Black man answers. Marilyn introduces him as Clevon, who greets Monk with a “What’s up, brother?” After Clevon leaves, Marilyn explains that she and Clevon used to date and are in the process of breaking up.
Clevon, with his stereotypically Black-sounding name and effortlessly cool vibe (“What’s up, brother?”) makes Monk feel square and awkward by comparison—just as he did when he was a child. This scene shows how Monk continues to struggle with accepting himself, torn between the intellectual, high-brow person his father shaped him to be and the “Black” personality he’s never quite been able to pull off. Although Marilyn assures Monk that she and Clevon are breaking up, it’s clear that Monk feels some jealousy or sense of competition with the man.
Themes
Later, Monk travels to an assisted care facility outside Columbia, Maryland, where he knows he’ll eventually send Mother, though he’s waiting for one last episode to convince him that it’s time. He tells Bill about it later. After a pause, Bill says that he gets to see the kids one weekend a month now, though the arrangement requires his lover to be out of the house when they visit. Monk commiserates with the unfairness of Bill’s situation.
Bill’s admission about his struggle to see his kids (recall that Erasure was published in 2001, when gay people in the U.S. experienced considerably more discrimination than they do today) shows Monk that accepting and embracing one’s true self isn’t without its costs. In Bill’s case, his coming out as a gay man may leave him more in touch with himself, but it creates distance and tension between himself and his family.
Themes
Monk waits a beat and then tells Bill that they have another sister. He fills him in on some of the details from the letters. Bill says it’s “just like him to spring this on us.” Monk retorts that Father tried to keep the affair hidden—he’d ordered Mother to burn the papers, after all. But Bill scoffs and reminds Monk that Mother is afraid to boil water for too long lest it start a fire. Monk realizes that Bill is right. And then he understands that Bill has always understood Father better than he has: “Enemies always understand each other better than friends.”
Bill’s sense of their late father contrasts sharply with Monk’s. Bill’s observation, “Enemies always understand each other better than friends” suggests that Father’s favoritism toward Monk caused Monk to overlook flaws that were obvious to Bill and Lisa. This shows how strongly a person’s desire for acceptance, safety, and support can influence their beliefs and actions. Monk’s sense of his father isn’t positive because his father was necessarily a good person—it’s because he made Monk feel worthy and good. Now that Monk is starting to question is former idolatry of his father, it stands to reason that the self he constructed to please his father might too start to crumple.
Themes
Later, Maynard stops by to see Lorraine, and they announce that they’re getting married. The wedding will be this Saturday—just two days away. They explain that they’re old and don’t want to waste any time.
Maynard and Lorraine’s urgency to get married perhaps instills a sense of urgency in Monk himself—not to get married, but to get better in touch with himself so that he can live a more authentic and fulfilling life.
Themes
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Later, Monk goes to Marilyn’s house for coffee. Marilyn tells Monk that she and Clevon are now officially broken up. She pulls Monk in for a kiss, but just then, he sees a copy of Juanita Mae Jenkins’s We’s Lives In Da Ghetto on the table. He brings it up, and Marilyn says she thought it was good. He confronts her about what she thought was good about it, asking if she’s ever known anyone who talks like the characters in the book talk. He tells her he thinks the book is “idiotic” and “exploitative” and doesn’t understand how a smart person could read it. Marilyn is puzzled by Monk’s sudden, inexplicable hostility. Then she becomes angry. She tells him to leave. Monk says he’s sorry, but on his way out, he can hear Marilyn start to cry.
This tense scene between Monk and Marilyn shows that whatever deep, critical thinking Monk’s diary entries undertake with regard to race, racial identity, and his own life, it’s not having much of an impact on Monk’s behavior. Instead he takes out his frustration and confusion on Marilyn, angrily insulting her for liking literature he claims is “idiotic” and “exploitative” when the person he’s truly angry at is himself for producing literature of this ilk while claiming to look down on it. Once more, Monk’s failure to fully investigate himself and his deep-seated conflicts heightens his sense of alienation.
Themes
