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Chapter 7
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
Alix remembers a time when she still lived in New York: She and her friends are sitting in Rachel’s backyard to talk, eat pizza, and drink wine. They decide to tell each other their most embarrassing secrets. Rachel begins, recalling how, when her son was a toddler, he would talk—loudly and in public places—about penises. Jodi, then pregnant with her son, Payne, goes next. A children’s casting director, she recalls a summer when her daughter, Prudence, went to summer camp and told one of the counselors that her mommy’s job involved putting little boys and girls in front of a video camera and making them do exactly what she says. Jodi had to go to the camp and explain that she wasn’t a pedophile. Tamra goes next and tells a story about getting her period during a lecture on her second day at Brown.
The placement of this scene right after Kelley alludes to his and Alix’s horrible breakup suggests that Alix’s embarrassing moment is going to be about the breakup. It will be interesting to see how Alix’s version of events differs from Kelley’s. And because readers know that Alix places a high value on external appearances, readers should take her version of events with a grain of salt. Even among her friends, she’s likely going to spin events to portray herself in a more flattering light.
Themes
Then it’s Alix’s turn. She tells everyone about how her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Murphy, came into a large inheritance and used it to sue the funeral home that had accidentally cremated (rather than burying) her deceased grandparents. The Murphys won, and suddenly, the family was wealthy—at least by Allentown standards. They immediately went crazy spending their money on gaudy displays of wealth, like a McMansion and flying first class (Alix—who was still Alex, then, hadn’t even been on a plane before that.) They also employed Mrs. Claudette Laurens, an older Black woman, to cook, clean, and care for Alex and her younger sister Betheny.
This scene confirms, with Alix’s own words, that she comes from money—even if that money came later in her adolescence, and even if she was ashamed of it. Alix criticizes her parents’ gaudy displays of wealth, but she remains ignorant to the fact that her own minimalist aesthetic is itself a display of wealth—just one that’s updated for the modern era. Another detail about which Alix remains ignorant is how she is repeating her parents’ problematic behavior by, like them, hiring a Black woman to perform domestic labor. Finally, note how in this flashback, Alix goes by Alex, since this was her original name, and the name she went by in high school. That she felt compelled to change her name reinforces her defining personality trait: that she can reconfigure her life to embody a certain narrative or image, and that superficial changes like appearances or a name change count as much as actionable change. Also, her name change shows how desperately Alix wants to distance herself from this period of her life.
Themes
Then, in Alex’s senior year of high school, she got her first boyfriend, Kelley Copeland. Alex wrote Kelley tons of embarrassing love letters. One day, Kelley showed Robbie Cormier, a popular Black student athlete, one of the more embarrassing letters. In the letter, Alex wrote that her parents would be out of town and that she wanted to use the opportunity to lose her virginity to Kelley; she included her address, driveway code, and a map to the house so that Kelley could make Alex’s plan a reality. Robbie approached the unsuspecting Alex later that day about her parents being out of town. He asked to throw a party at her mansion. Back then, Alex hadn’t known why Robbie was talking to her—she and Kelley weren’t outcasts, but they weren’t popular, either.
This scene seems to lay the groundwork for whatever drama brought about Alix (Alex) and Kelley’s breakup. The conflict here is that Robbie seems to know about Alex’s invitation to Kelley, even though Alex invited Kelley in a private letter intended for Kelley’s eyes only. So Alex is left to wonder how Robbie found out about her parents being out of town; has Kelley shared the letter with Robbie? Readers know Kelley did share the letter with Robbie—however, it’s also worth keeping in mind that this story is Alix’s retelling, and she hasn’t proven herself a reliable narrator thus far. It’s worth taking her story with a grain of salt, given her unreliability.
Themes
When Alex confronted Kelley about Robbie’s request later that day, Kelley denied showing the letter to Robbie. In fact, he claimed he’d never even received it. Alex was livid, especially after Kelley suggested that Robbie’s idea to have a party would be fun. Alex had long been annoyed by Kelley’s obsession with Robbie and the other popular star athletes at school, and she hated how desperately Kelley wanted them to like him. She immediately vetoed Kelley’s suggestion to hold the party.
Alix assumes Kelley is lying and has really showed Robbie the private letter to ingratiate himself with the popular Black kids at their school. If Alix is telling the truth, it lends credence to Kelley fetishizing (or at least, having a problematic relationship to) Black people and Black culture. And again, remember that Alix is telling this story to her friends, so her version of events might not be the true one.
Themes
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Kelley came over that weekend as planned, and he and Alex had sex. Later, though, Robbie and the other popular kids came over even though they weren’t invited. Alex saw security footage of Robbie punching in the garage code, which confirmed her suspicion that Kelley had showed Robbie the note. The kids started goofing off around the pool, and many of them were intoxicated. Things got worse when Kelley suggested that Alex just go through with the party since everybody was there anyway. Alex was livid; she saw this as Kelley taking advantage of the situation to climb the school social ladder. Then Claudette came home with Alex’s younger sister, Betheny, and asked Alex if she should call the police. Alex said yes. Kelley tried to reason with her, but she was resolute. “You don’t even know them!” she said, though what she really meant to say was “They don’t know you for a reason.”
Even if Kelley is telling the truth and he didn’t show Robbie Alex’s letter, he’s still being an insensitive jerk. It’s clear that Alex, infatuated with her first boyfriend, wants to have a romantic evening alone, yet Kelley is asking her to share their evening with people she doesn’t know all that well. The more uncertain aspect of this evening, though, is whether Kelley’s actions are unfeeling but not untypical of the average teenage boy, or whether (as Alex claims) they are symptomatic of Kelley’s fetishization of Black people. When Alix (inwardly) observes that Robbie and his friends “don’t know [Kelley] for a reason,” she seems to suggest that racial difference has prevented Kelley from orbiting the same social circle as Robbie and his friends.
Themes
Alex never intended to press charges—she’d only wanted the kids to leave—but when the police arrived, they caught Robbie, found a small bag of cocaine in his pockets, and arrested him. Robbie’s arrest was bad news for Alex’s reputation. Soon, the whole school was calling her “Princess Murphy” and accusing her family of being “new money trash.” Once, when Robbie ran into Alex at a Jamba Juice, he called her “Massa Murphy.” Kelley broke up with Alex on Monday and told her he was going to go to prom with Robbie’s cousin Sasha instead. Alex couldn’t believe Kelley was breaking up with her over her mistake. It also seemed like he was breaking up with her for Robbie. Then Kelley added insult to injury with his parting line to Alex: “I think it would be best…if we went our separate ways? And that those paths never again…connected.”
Alex’s privilege prevents her from anticipating the consequences of her so-called mistake. As a white teenager with wealthy parents, calling the police means something different for her than it does for a Black kid like Robbie. Adding to her ignorance is her implicit belief that everyone is overreacting to her actions. She thinks Kelley is being petty by breaking up with her and hanging out with Robbie’s crowd instead (and perhaps he is). Further, she fails to acknowledge that the breakup is the result of ideological or moral incompatibility—that Kelley doesn’t want to be with somebody who weaponizes their privilege against others yet simultaneously plays the victim.
Themes
The last time Alex saw Kelley was at a gas station the day before graduation. He was wearing Fila flip-flops with white tube socks, just like Robbie and his friends wore. By this point, Kelley was an accepted member of Robbie’s popular crowd; meanwhile, the whole school ostracized Alex. Furious, she told him he had no right to share her letter with Robbie. She also reiterated that she only called the police to protect Claudette and Betheny. Kelley seemed confused as he asked, “You had to protect your sister from Robbie?”
Alex’s insistence that she’s not racist is called into question when she claims that she was only “protect[ing]” her sister and Claudette from Robbie. Why would she need to protect her younger sister from some random kid? Was her apprehension rooted in a racist assumption that Black people are more aggressive?
Themes
Alex decided to go to college out of state to get away from everyone, and that’s how she ended up at NYU. Her parents wouldn’t pay for it, so she took out loans and supported herself. Now, as she recounts the story to her friends, she wishes she could go back in time and comfort her teenage self. Alix’s friends comfort her, reminding her that they’d never have met her if she hadn’t “become a Pennsylvania pariah.” Then Briar interrupts the women to ask for Alix. Alix jokingly remarks, “Someone could tell I was having too much fun.”
Alix’s narrative (the one she tells her Manhattan friends) that she’s the victim of this situation is not all that convincing. She acts as though not having parents who could afford to put her through a very expensive private university is a unique experience among Americans, when student loan debt is an enormously widespread problem. Finally, Alix’s response to Briar’s interruption reaffirms how inconvenienced and unfulfilled Alix feels by motherhood. She sees her real and fun life and her life as a mother as totally incompatible.
Themes
