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Chapter 22
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Such a Fun Age, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
External Behavior vs. Internal Truth
White Guilt, Ignorance, and Redemption
The Quest for Meaning
Race, Class, and Privilege
Summary
Analysis
The following afternoon, Alix wanders through Emira’s unfamiliar neighborhood, trying to walk at a pace “that f[alls] somewhere between feeling safe and looking offensively scared.” She hasn’t called Emira to say that she’s coming since she doesn’t want to chance Emira turning her away. Alix carries Catherine strapped to her chest, and Briar pushes a children’s scooter beside them. They reach Emira’s building, and Alix presses the button for Emira’s unit. Emira’s fuzzy voice crackles through the intercom. She sounds confused, but she buzzes them in.
Alix pretends to be openminded and accepting of people who haven’t had the privileges that she has had, but the fear she feels as she walks through Emira’s neighborhood shows how totally out of her element she feels when she’s actually forced to exist in impoverished spaces. Ultimately, her social consciousness is just a performance—not something she wants to live out in her real life.
Themes
Emira appears downstairs. She’s wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a denim jacket, and her hair is pulled up into a silk wrap. She’s not wearing makeup, and her eyes are puffy. Alix sees Emira’s appearance as evidence that Emira and Kelley have broken up. Alix and her kids follow Emira upstairs. The decrepit apartment building depresses Alix; the feeling continues as she enters Emira’s apartment, which is furnished with old, mismatched furniture. Alix looks disapprovingly at an old futon and remembers an old blog post in which she called futons “glorified bean bags.” A lidless aquarium rests on the floor next to the couch. It’s filled with potted plants. Briar runs to it, immediately fascinated. Alix tells her not to touch.
Alix’s actions the day before become even more nefarious when it’s revealed that she released the video to break up Emira and Kelley—not just so Emira could receive justice for her mistreatment at Market Depot. That Alix sees Emira’s obviously distressed, disheveled appearance as a success is telling. It shows that she’s perfectly willing to cause Emira suffering—even as she purports to be helping her. Again, Alix’s ignorant but well-intentioned actions are becoming harder to view with even a hint of sympathy.
Themes
Alix and Emira sit down to talk. Emira asks if she can go first. She assumes that Alix is here to fire her after seeing how she behaved in the now-viral Market Depot video. Emira promises that she’s never used bad language in front of Briar before—it’s just that she was so afraid that the guard would take Briar away from her.
Emira’s assumption that Alix has come here to fire her shows just how in the dark she is about Alix. It doesn’t even occur to her that Alix could be responsible for the leaked video. Emira’s ignorance makes Alix’s actions all the more craven and unforgivable.
Themes
Alix assures Emira that she and Peter aren’t mad at her in the slightest—in fact, they’re so grateful that they have someone strong and confident to protect their children. Then she pulls a small, wrapped box out of her purse and hands it to Briar to give to Emira. “I want to open dis,” says Briar, taking the gift from her mother. Alix tells Briar to let Emira open it, but Emira lets Briar help her. They unwrap the box to reveal a 2016 pocket calendar. Emira is confused. Alix tells her to look inside, and she sees her name printed on all the Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Alix explains that she has accepted an offer to teach at the New School on Tuesday evenings, and they’d love for Emira to watch the kids overnight then. They can employ her full-time and offer her benefits and vacation time.
That Alix can deliver this rehearsed, self-righteous speech without admitting to her complicity in the video’s release further paints her as an unsympathetic villain. Alix has pushed the limits of her willingness to betray Emira’s trust ever since she began to snoop through Emira’s phone, but she’s reached a whole new level by this point in the novel. It's also disturbing that Alix is framing the offer of fulltime work to Emira as a gift; she’s almost implying that hiring Emira in spite of the agitation and unprofessionalism that Emira demonstrated in the video is proof of Alix’s good will and empathy. In reality, though, Alix’s actions in this scene are really evidence of her poor character: she’s lying to Emira’s face to recast herself as Emira’s savior, when in reality, Emira wouldn’t need saving if Alix hadn’t released the video.
Themes
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Emira starts to cry, and Alix apologizes for thrusting such a big decision on her. She tells Emira that she can get back to her next week with her decision. Emira, looking simultaneously happy and sad, regains her composure and tells Alix, “No, I’m sorry, yeah. Yeah, that sounds really good.” Alix overenthusiastically tells Emira what “amazing news” this is. Before Alix leaves, she tells Emira that she and Peter want to help Emira with the video problem. And this time, Emira says yes.
Repeatedly, this interaction has presented numerous opportunities for Alix to come clean about her complicity in the video’s release, and yet she fails to do so. In fact, she only doubles down on her deceitfulness, going so far as to offer to help Emira out of the video problem that only exists because she leaked the video.
Themes
Early Monday morning, Laney Thacker and her camera crew set up at the Chamberlain residence. Not long after, Emira and Zara arrive. Tamra is there, too—she took the train in from New York and arrived early with coffee and pastries for everyone. As Alix prepares to make her own local-news debut, she asks Tamra if she “did the right thing.” Tamra assures Alix that she did: “This is probably the best thing to ever happen to Emira.”
That Alix needs Tamra’s reassurance to convince herself that she’s done the right thing in releasing the tape reaffirms how much Alix relies on others’ opinions of her for validation. She doesn’t feel fulfilled unless she looks good to others. Tamra’s observation that the video’s release “is probably the best thing to ever happen to Emira” is paternalistic and dehumanizing. It suggests that Emira is incapable of empowering herself without the assistance of a white, wealthy woman like Alix. Tamra has learned to achieve success through assimilating into the broader white world, and so she believes that the same goes for Emira.
Themes
