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45. Emilia
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Salt to the Sea, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Agency, Willpower, and Fate
Storytelling and Fantasy
Memory and Survival
Family and Community vs. Selfishness
Summary
Analysis
The group moves more quickly now that they are officially allowed to evacuate. As Florian walks, he thinks back to a conversation with Florian’s father, who warned him that Dr. Lange was trying to use his son, not train him. His father argued that by serving Lange he was “Not a traitor to your country. Much worse. A traitor to your soul.”
Florian mistakenly put his trust in Dr. Lange, which likely contributes to his reluctance to trust other people now. His father tried to teach him that loyalty to his country was less important to loyalty to his own values and he own sense of morality.
Themes
Those were the last word’s Florian’s father ever spoke to him, as he was killed soon after. Now, Florian carries on in his father’s memory, with his father’s words always in his mind. He thinks how he “risked everything, confronting fate and the knowledge that,” if he fails, he “authored [his] own demise.”
A German soldier stops Florian and looks at his papers. The papers not only pass inspection, but impress the soldier, who salutes Florian and calls him “Herr Beck.” He begins to ask Florian if he is traveling with Joana and the others, but an aerial attack and series of explosions interrupts their conversation.
Florian has doctored his papers to make his passage easier. In this way, the identity he has constructed for himself changes the way he is perceived and moves through the world.
Themes
