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Book 2, Chapter 10
Themes
Key
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
The following fall, Bryn gives birth to twin boys. Bryn sends Elen and Bethan to Alys and Claire, and Claire realizes that Alys is beginning to train Bethan to take her place when she dies. Claire does pull-ups in a doorway. She sometimes is frustrated with Einar, but she also realizes that he loves her. Tall Andras married over the summer—and this caused Claire to realize, sadly, that “a part of life is passing [her and Einar] by.” Still, she continues her exercises and trusts that Einar knows what he’s talking about when he tells her to do seemingly silly things, like learn to move pebbles from toe to toe.
Seeing Tall Andras marry forces Claire to confront that she has a choice here. She could stay and marry Einar; it’s implied that nobody else here wants to marry him, establishing Claire as essentially his only option. But because Claire is so focused on climbing out of this village, she realizes that she’s condemning both of them to being single for the rest of their days.
Themes
Claire sleeps beside Alys through the winter, trying to keep the old woman warm. One night, Alys observes that Claire’s mother must miss her—but though Claire remembers her parents, she tells Alys she doesn’t think her mother loved her. This shocks Alys, who insists mothers always love their children. But Claire explains that everyone where she came from took pills that kept them from feeling emotions like love. Alys mutters that they’re fools, but she says Claire “loved” her son and that’s why she’s going to climb out. Claire corrects her: she still loves her son.
In Claire’s original community, being a parent meant that a person attended to their children’s basic material needs—it didn’t mean showing them love. And this lack of love, Claire seems to suggest, is what led to the fractured family relationships in that community. Claire realizes now that love is what binds parents and children together, and since she still loves her son, she’s still bound to him in a way she isn’t to the parents who raised her.
Themes
