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Chapter 24
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Hate Race, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racial Discrimination in Australia
Racism, Childhood, and Loss of Innocence
Race and Beauty Standards
Injustice and Complicity
The Power of Words
Summary
Analysis
In the present day, Maxine walks her son to his first day of school after the holidays, carrying her young daughter in a sling on her chest. Her son is excited to return, but he briefly becomes upset when he realizes he forgot his water bottle, so the three stop into a gas station to buy him some water. The shop clerk admires Maxine’s daughter, but then makes a comment about how Maxine carries her daughter, saying that the carrying style seems “instinctive” for “you people.” Maxine is silently upset and ushers her children out of the store. After dropping her son off at school, she takes her daughter to a park and lies down, staring up into the trees. She thinks of how her children are, like her, “descendants of those unbroken.”
The epilogue, set in the present day, highlights another microaggression that Maxine experiences just trying to go about her day. This shows how little has changed in Australia since her own childhood. However, the memoir’s peaceful ending, with Maxine lying next to her young daughter, offers a subtle note of hope. The echo of the phrase “descendants of the unbroken,” which Maxine used to refer to herself at the beginning of the novel, shows both the pain and pride that has been passed down through the generations of her family.
Themes
