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Adolescence: Chapter 60
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Brilliant Friend, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Female Friendship
Masculine vs. Feminine Violence
Women’s Work
Poverty, Social Climbing, and Sacrifice
The Uses of Community
Love, Sex, and Strategy
Summary
Analysis
As Lenù makes conversation with Alfonso and Marisa—hoping that Nino will talk to her too—Antonio comes up behind Lenù and asks her to come sit with him. She tells him to get away and stop drawing the attention of her mother, who has figured out “everything.” Lenù notices that all throughout the room, people are raising their voices—a few guests have figured out that different tables are being served different things. Not everyone is getting the same quality of wine, and some tables are getting food before others.
As the reception grows more chaotic, Lenù tries to distance herself from most of the people from her neighborhood—including her own family—by talking with her schoolmates, whose attention she believes is more important because they are more intelligent.
Themes
Trying to ignore the shouts and growing discord, Lenù engages Nino in a discussion of poverty in Naples. Lenù is struck by Nino’s articulateness and his informed opinions. He urges Lenù to read newspapers and magazines. Lenù is embarrassed—all her life, following Lila’s example, she has only read novels. As Nino and Lenù continue talking, he disparages novels and “literature,” and Lenù hangs on Nino’s ever word. She can feel Antonio’s gaze on her and knows he must be getting angry, but she cannot tear herself away from her dazzling, engaging conversation with Nino.
As young girls, Lenù and Lila bonded over language, literature, and writing—they imagined careers as brilliant novelists. For Lenù to be told that novels are frivolous is painful—but she doesn’t recognize how cruel Nino is being in writing off and devaluing the ways in which Lenù has educated herself and found relief from the pressures of life in her neighborhood.
Themes
Antonio at last comes up to Lenù and asks her to dance. She begrudgingly agrees but warns him not to get too close to her. As they take their place on the dance floor, Lenù realizes how intensely she has been shutting out the rest of the party—everyone is drunk, and the festivities are in full swing. The quarrel between the bride’s relatives and the groom’s is still going—Lila’s relations feel they are getting bad wine and bad service. As Lenù looks around at her friends and neighbors, she is disgusted by their behavior and by the rote patterns of their lives—she wonders if she is still like them.
Lenù has begun to see herself as different from her family and neighbors. She feels that her education and the ideas it’s opened her up to separate her from them on some fundamental level—now, looking around Lila’s wedding, she fears that she will never be able to truly differentiate herself from them as long as she lives among them.
Themes
Antonio catches Lenù staring at Nino and expresses his sadness and discontent. He is angry that Lenù used him to confront Donato and now spends “hours” talking with his son, ignoring Antonio himself. Antonio points out how hard he worked to look good for the wedding, going into debt for a new suit and a haircut, only for Lenù to ignore him. He leaves her alone on the dance floor and goes out to the dance floor. Lenù knows that if she follows Antonio out to the terrace, she’ll be able to make up with him—if she doesn’t, she knows, he’ll leave her. She decides not to follow him out and instead goes back to sit with Nino, who is caught up in an intense conversation about school with Alfonso.
Antonio knows that Lenù has used him—and he is despondent over having been treated badly by the girl he loves. Lenù, however, has her sights set on Nino because she believes he has the power to take her out of the neighborhood and help her elevate her social, intellectual, and economic status.
Themes
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Lenù tries to get Nino’s attention back by asking him about the magazine and when it will come out. He tells her it is already out and has been for a couple of weeks. Lenù asks where she can get a copy. Nino says he’ll get one for her. Lenù is elated. After a brief pause, Nino tells her that her piece isn’t in the journal—there wasn’t room for it.
Nino’s brusque, unemotional delivery of the news that Lenù’s piece will not appear in the journal shows his contempt for her—he doesn’t actually take her work or her mind seriously.
Themes
