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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On Beauty, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Nature of Beauty
Politics in Academia
Race and Identity
The Value of Family
Summary
Analysis
Zora is persistent, and over the course of two weeks, she sends Claire 34 emails in support of the unenrolled students in her poetry class, like Carl. Although Claire agrees with Zora, she’s overwhelmed by all the emails and calls Erskine in to help her. Erskine promises Claire that everything will be fine—as much as Zora makes a fuss about things, she’s always quick to move on to the next topic.
Once again, Claire finds herself the victim of her own success. While previously she was haunted by her more famous early poems, now she finds herself haunted by her success at drawing Zora into her cult of devoted students. Erskine’s outside perspective allows him correctly see that Zora is so enthusiastic about helping students like Carl in the moment that Zora will never be able to sustain interest in the long run.
Themes
Erskine may not be the most morally upstanding character in the novel, but in his own way, he understands how to play academia’s politics better than almost anyone. Here, he has selfish motivations but ultimately ends up helping Carl.
Themes
Carl gets a job as the hip-hop archivist at a Wellington library. He enjoys the pay and how he doesn’t even have to dress up for work—in fact, people seem to respect him more when he dresses more casually. For his job, he gets a budget where he can decide which new CDs the library should buy each month. People congratulate Carl for getting paid to do nothing, but Carl believes his job is a big deal, based on the wordy welcome letter that Erskine wrote for him.
Unlike Erskine, Carl doesn’t understand the typical machinations of a university, and so he isn’t jaded about his new job in the same way that a campus veteran like Erskine is. Carl’s pride in his job and his genuine passion raises the question of why others like Howard and Erskine don’t seem to have the same passion anymore—whether they became cynical on their own or whether university politics encouraged them to become that way.
Themes
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Carl is enthusiastic about the job, coming in more often than he’s scheduled and suggesting major improvements to the archive. Erskine, however, is never available for a meeting to hear Carl’s suggestions. Zora often stops by Carl’s office to tell him she’s still working to keep him in Claire’s class, and Carl doesn’t have the heart to tell her he doesn’t even care if he can stay in the class.
Carl doesn’t understand that his job is made up and that, in spite of his glowing recommendation, Erskine is not actually that interested in what Carl does while he’s on the job. While some jobs, like being a professor, involve making a name for oneself, this passage suggests that success for someone in Carl’s position might instead involve trying to avoid drawing too much attention.
Themes
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One day when Zora comes to visit Carl, there’s a noisy protest related to Haiti going on outside. Zora tries to tell Carl she’s proud of the work he’s doing, but Carl thinks she’s patronizing him. Carl wants Zora to go, so eventually, she helps him close the window to stop the protest noise, then leaves.
The ongoing political issues in Haiti, which become a central part of Levi’s life, are nothing more than background noise to Zora and Carl. For Levi and his Haitian activist friends, the political disturbances in Haiti represent the hypocrisy of the United States, which claims to support democracy but helped overthrow Haiti’s democratically elected leader—and on a more personal level, this issue of failing to live up to ideals also impacts almost every character in the novel.
Themes
Meanwhile, Victoria sends Howard some emails with lewd photos as attachments, and Howard can’t stop thinking about them. He gets a hotel room where he can meet her. As the two of them are in the room and starting to get undressed, a Black woman in her fifties who works as a cleaner at the hotel accidentally walks in on them. The woman tries to apologize but doesn’t speak perfect English, and Howard gets embarrassed at how angrily Victoria scolds the woman. When Victoria tries to resume having sex, Howard says he can’t do it.
This random Black woman who works as a cleaner seems to remind Howard of Kiki, causing him to feel too guilty to continue having sex with Victoria. The fact that Howard associates his wife with a cleaner is problematic for several reasons, perhaps suggesting that he is guilty of seeing her as more like a servant than an equal—and this is why he continues to break his marriage vows by having affairs.
Themes
