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Chapter 27. The After
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
Monday desperately wants to be popular, so she decides to dye her hair. She insists to Claudia that Mrs. Charles won’t care, but Claudia notes that Ma would kill her for asking. Monday looks faraway for a moment, but then says she wants to dye her hair blond like Beyoncé. Claudia lends Monday money for hair dye and relaxer. Claudia checks in multiple times on Sunday. Monday is struggling; she’s never relaxed her hair herself before.
When Claudia quips that Ma would kill her for asking to dye her hair, Monday suddenly becomes distant—yet another clue that she’s suffering from abuse. But Claudia nevertheless tries to be a good friend by checking in on Monday to help her as much as she can with her hair.
Themes
On Monday morning, Claudia waits by the lockers. Monday comes in wearing a pink bucket hat, her eyes glassy. She pulls the hat off and Claudia almost screams. Monday’s hair is fried and bright orange. Claudia assures her it’s fixable, offers Ma’s help, and leads Monday to homeroom. Ms. Valente tries to control her shock, but the other kids don’t. Trevor screams that Monday looks like a Muppet, while Jacob says nothing. Monday runs out of the room, crying, and Ms. Valente sends Claudia after her.
Though Monday wants to be popular, her classmates’ reactions suggest she’s going to have a hard time achieving this goal. Specifically, when Jacob still ignores her at school, it shows that he has no intention of ever standing up for Monday or going public about their relationship—no matter what he promises on the weekends. In this sense, Monday and Claudia are on their own to support each other at school.
Themes
Claudia finds Monday sobbing in a bathroom stall. When Monday won’t open up, Claudia crawls under the door. It makes Monday laugh. After a minute, Monday says Jacob said he’d “want to be with [her] for real” if she looked like Beyoncé. She starts to cry and says that she thought things would be “better” with Jacob. She won’t tell Claudia what she means and collapses, sobbing, with her head in Claudia’s lap. Claudia tells her to forget about Jacob. They giggle when Monday blows her nose on Claudia’s skirt—but just then, a bright flash blinds them. They can’t figure out where it came from. That weekend, Ma takes Monday to the salon to fix her hair. The girls have no idea what they’ll find on Monday morning.
When Ma takes Monday to get her hair fixed at a salon, it suggests again that Mrs. Charles isn’t able to or interested in helping Monday navigate mistakes like this. It’s also worth noting that this salon trip is no doubt expensive, suggesting that Ma is both willing and able to help Monday out financially as needed. In this way, Ma takes some responsibility for the other kids in the community.
Themes
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