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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in If on a winter’s night a traveler, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Act of Reading
Academia and Publishing
Censorship and Government Oppression
Love, Lust, and Anxiety
Summary
Analysis
You and Ludmilla are married. You lie in a double bed that holds your parallel readings. She wants to turn off the light, but you tell her to wait because you’re just about to finish your book, If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino.
If on a winter’s night a traveler is a very unconventional novel, so it’s funny that it has the most conventional ending of all: a happy Still, despite the neatness of the ending, the previous chapters suggest both that many people will not find the mutual understanding that the Reader and Ludmilla do, and that future failures to communicate may threaten the Reader and Ludmilla’s period of bliss.
Themes
