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Childhood: Chapter 17
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
That summer, Lila is in a cast, and Fernando will barely even look at her while it’s on. Lenù thinks that Fernando’s violence toward Lila is “small” compared to the violence happening elsewhere throughout the neighborhood as the temperatures rise. At the Bar Solara, a popular gambling location run by the Camorrist Silvio Solara, many fights break out each week. Silvio takes it upon himself to beat up customers who ask for loans or can’t pay for drinks; he enlists the help of his teenage sons Marcello and Michele in doling out violence as well.
As violence between the men of the neighborhood ramps up throughout the summer months, Lenù paints a portrait of the many tensions escalating throughout the neighborhood and foreshadows a major shift in the neighborhood yet to come.
Themes
In the middle of the summer, Don Achille is murdered on a rainy August day. Don Achille had just gotten up from a midday nap in order to open the kitchen window—as he did, someone plunged a knife into his neck, spraying blood all over his kitchen and killing him. Lila becomes fascinated with the story of Don Achille’s murder and repeats it over and over again, each time focusing on new details. Lila claims to know secret details of the murder and keeps Carmela and Lenù both rapt yet terrified with each new repetition. In each retelling of the story, Lila imagines the murderer to be female.
Lila becomes obsessed with telling the story of Don Achille’s murder because she’s preoccupied with the idea that a powerful man—who controlled the fates of so many—has been vanquished. In spite of her youth, Lila has put together the fact that her fate and the fates of her friends are dictated by the actions of a few powerful men, and she relishes imagining these men’s ends.
Themes
Many days that summer, Lila and Lenù play at Carmela’s house. Carmela’s mother is a cheerful, kind, welcoming woman, and Lenù enjoys being at the Peluso house. One morning, as the three girls play checkers, there is a knock at the door. When Signora Peluso opens the door, she begins screaming—the carabinieri (police) begin dragging Alfredo away. Alfredo screams to his wife and children, professing his innocence—he declares that he was not responsible for the murder of Don Achille. As the Pelusos begin to weep, Lenù joins them—only Lila does not cry.
Though Alfredo Peluso professes his innocence to his family as he is dragged away by the police, he certainly had motive for killing Don Achille. Lenù is tremendously affected by the grief now facing the Peluso family—only Lila, who delights in the dismantling of the neighborhood’s power structures, stoically stands by.
Themes
Lenù remembers this event as the “most terrible thing” she witnessed in her childhood—but now, as an adult, she remembers that Lila was strangely unaffected by it. Elena recalls Lila comforting Carmela by stroking her hair and gently telling her that if her father was the murderer after all, he’d done the right thing in killing Don Achille.
Lila and Lenù’s very different reactions to Don Achille’s murder—and Alfredo Peluso’s arrest—demonstrate their differing views on the structures of power and violence that define their neighborhood. Lenù feels terrified and helpless as she confronts them, while Lila seemingly believes in change.
Themes
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