Previous
Chapter 12
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
That night, Monk stays up all night, too afraid to take his eyes off Mother. When Mother wakes up the next morning, she asks where Lorraine is. Monk explains that Lorraine got married last night. After a pause, Monk tells Mother she has to pack a bag today—he’s taking her to a hospital.
Monk’s honesty with Mother about where he’s taking her point to a new, conscious effort to be different from, rather than emulate, his father: he won’t lie to and disrespect her the way his father did when he was alive.
Themes
Later that day, Monk convinces Mother to take a stroll along the beach. As they walk, Mother says how much she misses Lisa, and how she can’t believe she’s gone. She also says she wishes she were closer to Bill and his children. She notes how Father was too hard on Bill. Monk, in contrast, was “his special child.” The conversation upsets Monk. Mother is “so much herself” in this moment. After a while, Monk decides to come clean with her about where he’s taking her and why. He describes some of the incidents that have come up recently. Mother accepts this calmly and says she trusts Monk’s judgment.
Mother’s sudden lucidness—she remembers that Lisa is dead and laments cogently and self-assuredly her distant relationship to Bill—makes what Monk knows he must do even harder. That Mother, in her lucid state, describes Monk as “his [father’s] special child” adds to Monk’s inner turmoil now that he’s begun to see the full truth of his father’s self-centeredness, and how those negative traits influenced Monk’s development and adult self.
Themes
In a brief interlude, Monk describes his first table saw. It came with a plastic guard, which Monk would “faithfully” use each time, though it would annoy him when the cumbersome shield would interfere with the woodcutting process. Then he eventually started to remove the guard for larger pieces of wood, and eventually he stopped using it altogether, no longer thinking about the risk of potentially losing a finger.
In the novel, Monk’s woodworking symbolizes the act of successfully and straightforwardly communicating one’s character and intentions to others, something he struggles to do in his real life. In this passage, the plastic guard functions as a metaphor for the defenses and pretenses people enact in their interactions with others to avoiding being hurt and disappointed. In fact, however, while putting up walls can protect a person from hurt, they ultimately inhibit successful communication, like how the plastic shield interferes with the woodcutting process.
Themes
Back in the present, Monk takes Mother to her new home in Columbia. Later, he picks Bill up from the airport. Bill has dyed his hair blond, and Monk hardly recognizes him. At home, Bill showers and then joins Monk in the den. Monk says he’d like to see Mother now. Bill argues that it’s a bit late—it’s nearly six by now—but he gives in. At the care facility, Mother doesn’t recognize Bill or Monk.
Monk hardly recognizes Bill with his new hair because the person he still sees Bill as the false outer persona Bill used to project to the world when he was still hiding his homosexuality.
Themes
Get the entire Erasure LitChart as a printable PDF.
Later, Yul calls Monk to tell him that a Hollywood producer, Wiley Morgenstein, wants to pay Monk three million dollars for the movie rights to My Pafology. But he wants to meet Stagg R. Leigh. Monk hatches a plan to attend a lunch in character as Stagg. Yul is in disbelief at Monk’s ridiculous plan but gives in. He reminds Monk how much money is on the table and tells him not to mess it up. Meanwhile, Monk returns to the box of his father’s personal things and finds an address for Fiona’s sister, Tilly McFadden, who lives in Lower East Side Manhattan.
With his submission of My Pafology, Monk begins to see the same financial success as Juanita Mae Jenkins, whose novel also got a lucrative movie deal. With Mother needing expensive medical care, Monk isn’t in a position to turn down the deal, so he decides to accept it, but with the caveat that he will do so as “Stagg Leigh.” This way, he can continue the charade that he is not a sellout and that My Pafology is an intricate work of performance art.
Themes
Monk’s diary contains a dialogue (it’s unclear whether the dialogue is real or imagined) between an editor and Stagg R. Leigh. Stagg insists on changing the title of My Pafology to Fuck. The editor is aghast and says they can’t do that. Stagg says they’d better, or else the deal is off.
Monk’s diary entry expresses his mounting frustration—with the industry that is so eager to publish a work as inferior as My Pafology, and with himself for abandoning his artistic integrity by writing what he considers to be superficial, offensive drivel. The demand to change the book’s title to Fuck signals Monk’s desire to lay the Stagg R. Leigh project to rest—surely, he reasons, the publishing industry has its limits as to how low it will stoop in the name of advancing so-called “raw” works that depict the “real” Black experience.
Themes
