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Book 2, Chapter 5
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 good weather persists, and the scarecrow’s gourd rots. Not long after Claire learns what death is, Andras’s mother, Eilwyn, dies. Alys and Claire go to prepare her body for burial, and Alys tells Claire that she washed Claire’s body much like this on the day Claire came in from the sea. Observing the messy hut, Alys says that they’ll need a woman here—and that Andras wants to marry Claire. Claire says she doesn’t want to marry. Carefully, Alys notes that she saw Claire’s “wound” on her belly, and though Claire doesn’t remember where it came from, she fears Claire won’t be able to have babies. (By now, Claire has learned that men here all want sons.) But, Alys adds, “[t]here are other ways a woman finds worth.”
In this conversation, Alys suggests to Claire that she might have a harder time fitting in here than one would expect (and Tall Andras would like). It’s unclear if Alys is aware of what a C-section is (recall that this village doesn’t have electricity or modern medicine to perform such a procedure), and so her assessment of Claire’s fertility may not be correct. Still, she suggests that all this means is that Claire is going to have to forge her own path—something Claire has been doing for more than a year now since Abe’s birth.
Themes
Everything is new to Claire, and she takes stock of what she’s learned. She now knows her colors; yellow is her favorite. Yellow-wing, the bird, will now hop onto her finger, and she doesn’t know why she was so afraid of birds. Lightning is terrifying. Animals in general she’s come to like, especially Lame Einar’s sheep. However, though she likes butterflies, she’s scared of most bugs. The first time she sees a rainbow, she almost faints.
The world, Claire finds, is full of wonders and delights—as well as frightening things like bugs and lightning. Her world is truly opening up, as none of these things existed in Claire’s original community. And the good, Claire’s assessments seem to suggest, far outweighs the bad. This suggests that Claire fits in here better than she did in her previous community, where she chafed against the rules and regulations that denied her emotions she’s come to appreciate.
Themes
