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Chapter 29
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Sarah’s Key, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Remembrance and History
The Power of Silence
Guilt
Identity
Bravery
The Limits of Love
Summary
Analysis
Julia awakens the day after her disastrous dinner date with Bertrand, feeling as if she has “aged overnight.” She is on her way to the office in low spirits when she receives a call from Guillaume, who asks her to meet him at six in the evening. A few minutes later, Julia gets another phone call, this time from her father-in-law, Edouard Tézac. Edouard has learned from Mamé, his mother, that Julia has been asking her questions about the rue de Saintonge apartment. He asks Julia to stop asking such questions and calmly hangs up. Baffled, Julia wonders what Edouard does not want her to know.
This chapter establishes Edouard as a possible threat to Julia’s investigation of the rue de Saintonge apartment. Despite his efforts to quash Julia’s search, Edouard’s strange silence about the apartment only causes Julia’s interest in it to deepen. This chapter raises the possibility that Julia’s “outsider” position in the Tézac family might be of some advantage to her in breaking through the silence that her in-laws have come to accept as normal.
Themes
Still devastated by Bertrand’s reaction to her pregnancy, Julia decides she can’t handle going into the office. Instead she calls Franck Lévy and asks to move up her appointment with him, which she’d originally scheduled for later in the day. At the meeting, the two discuss specific details of the roundup. Julia feels overwhelmed by the photos of Jewish children in Lévy’s office and the knowledge that most of them died, numbering in the thousands.
The toll of her unwanted (from Bertrand’s perspective) pregnancy and her depressing research begin to manifest themselves physically in Julia’s body. She rededicates herself to her work as a way of coping with her feelings—a behavior which will continue to be a pattern for her.
Themes
