LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Son, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Pain and Maternal Love
Travel, Fitting In, and Values
Emotion, Individuality, and the Human Experience
Family and Coming of Age
Community and Sacrifice
Summary
Analysis
Now, when Claire can focus through the pains, she hears people busy around her, prodding her belly and checking her blood pressure. She’s blindfolded and tied down, and nobody will tell her if this is normal—though she’s pretty sure something is wrong. She can also tell that they really only care about the Product. Someone says they need to “put [Claire] out” so they can “go in for it,” and as Claire drifts off thanks to sweet-smelling gas, she can feel someone “carving” into her belly. She wakes up some time later in an empty room. Her aching belly is flat and empty. The Product is gone, and Claire misses it.
While this society seems detached and dismissive of individual members at the best of times, during her difficult labor, Claire realizes how little she matters to anyone here as a person. Her parents barely cared about her, and now, the doctors attending to her care about her baby way more than about her—nobody tells her what’s happening or why. And finding herself alone when she regains consciousness reinforces to her that she doesn’t really matter to the doctors. They got the baby, and now she’s on her own to figure out her painful emotions.
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Quotes
Over the next three weeks, Claire recovers in the Birthing Unit and then another holding place. It’s awkward, though, because Claire recovers more slowly than the others—she has a “wound,” while none of the others do. Then they all return to the dormitory and speak little of the “Task.” Nothing really has changed; two new Vessels have arrived, and a girl named Nancy, having recently delivered her third and final Product, was assigned to Farm for the rest of her working days. Claire is happy for Nancy, but she’s anxious about her own future. She knows something went wrong, but everyone seems confused when she asks them if their scars hurt. Nobody else has scars.
Claire’s baby was born via C-section, while the other girls gave birth vaginally (so Claire is the only one recovering from major surgery). This is framed as really unusual. The other girls’ confusion when she asks about their scars speaks to how unprepared anyone here is to deal with difference or going off-script. They only know how to move forward—having their second and third babies and then receiving their final work assignments.
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Now, the loudspeaker calls for Claire to come to the office. Wondering with a friend what she’s done, Claire heads to the office, where the committee tells her she’s been “decertified” and will be moved this afternoon. Claire begs for more of an explanation. They tell her she had a physical problem and shouldn’t have been inseminated. When Claire asks about her Product, they tell her that “he”—number Thirty-six—is fine. A man glares at the woman who called the product “he.” Claire is being reassigned to Fish Hatchery. As she gathers her things, she reflects that she has a son, and she again feels immense grief.
This place seems very unused to making mistakes, and it’s not prepared to help Claire process any of her difficult emotions. However, there are hints of humanity in this passage, particularly when the woman refers to Claire’s baby with a pronoun. This suggests that this society is, perhaps, fighting innate human emotions and experiences and working very hard to eliminate them—but they’re not entirely successful in this project.