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Chapter 26. The Before
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Monday’s Not Coming, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Child Abuse
Family, Community, and Responsibility
Growing Up, Independence, and Friendship
Secrecy and Shame
Poverty, Social Support, and Desperation
Memory, Repression, and Trauma
Summary
Analysis
Claudia writes to Monday in her journal. She says she knows now why the Group Five performance last year made it onto Good Morning America: Ms. Manis works the girls hard. Claudia isn’t sure if she can keep up and knows Monday would tell her to quit if she were here. But without Monday around, dance is all Claudia has.
Here, Claudia implies that without Monday, she has to lean more heavily on outlets like dance classes. In this way, she’s becoming more independent and learning that she can look for support and socialization from places other than just Monday.
Themes
Claudia takes her place in Ms. Manis’s Group Five class. Shannon and Megan whisper about Claudia not saying much, and another girl—Kit Kat—asks why Michael was asking about Megan. After class, Claudia changes before the other girls and tries to sneak out, but Megan is waiting for her at the elevators. She calls Claudia into an empty classroom to talk and asks if Claudia told anyone she saw her at the mall. Megan admits that she told her mom she was taking an extra lesson so she could hang out with Kam. Claudia laughs, and Megan smiles too.
Claudia isn’t yet comfortable trying to make friends with any of her fellow dancers. This is perhaps unsurprising, given how much they whisper about her. But when Claudia and Megan share the smile at the end of this passage, it offers hope that Claudia could start to see these girls as potential friends. Realizing that Megan was also not supposed to be at the mall with a boy shows Claudia that they may have some things in common.
Themes
