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Chapter 20
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Immortalists, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fate vs. Choice
Family and Shared History
Obsession
Death, Meaning, and Legacy
Surviving vs. Living
Magic, Religion, Dance, and Possibility
Summary
Analysis
Ten days before Thanksgiving, 2006—when Daniel is 48—he meets with Commander Colonel Bertram, his supervisor at the Military Entrance Processing Station. After medical school, Daniel worked at a hospital in West Point, but after ten years, he felt depleted by the high stakes work and the suffering he saw. Now, his job is to confirm that young people are healthy enough to go to war. He sees himself as a guardian, separating those who are ready for war from those who are not.
Daniel’s job aligns with his belief in choice over fate. His choices have a direct impact on many young men’s lives as he determines whether they are ready to go to war. Daniel’s desire to take on the role of a protector also likely stems from his guilt about not being able to protect Simon and Klara from their fates—something that he will fixate on throughout the chapter.
Themes
Colonel Bertram says that it’s time that Daniel took a break—he thinks Daniel is turning too many people away. The Colonel says that Daniel needs to write more waivers for guys who want to enlist but might have a bad knee or a cough. Daniel says he writes waivers when they’re warranted. Colonel Bertram replies that Daniel doesn’t want an Article 15 in his file, which would end his career and may even lead to his being discharged. Daniel is furious at the threat, but he knows he needs his job—Mira works at a public university and living expenses for Gertie and for Mira’s father’s have swallowed much of their savings. Colonel Bertram suspends Daniel’s duty for two weeks.
Daniel’s fury doesn’t only stem from the fact that he may lose his job and that he needs the money. If he keeps his job and allows himself to be pushed around by the Colonel, he will no longer have the same liberty to which he’s accustomed. He prides himself on his free will and his ability to make crucial decisions in his job, and without that ability his job loses its appeal and meaning.
Themes
As Daniel drives home from Albany to Kingston, he wonders what he will tell Mira. Before today, he felt like an oracle, and now he feels like a priest without his robes. When Daniel explains what happened, Mira is furious at the Colonel’s unethical behavior and says they’ll use the next two weeks to build his case. She suggests that he could get in touch with his family and spend some time with them.
Daniel comparing himself to an oracle or a priest demonstrates how his job makes him feel powerful and influential, almost to the point of supernatural ability, and now he has been stripped of that influence. Daniel’s concern over potentially losing his job illustrates how much he values it, and these thoughts begin to reveal his obsession with free will.
Themes
Years earlier, Mira asked why Daniel wasn’t close with his siblings. At times, Daniel thinks of his siblings with deep love because he’s known them from the beginning of his life. But when he is with them, he is resentful of the smallest things. Daniel recalls a time when he almost drowned in the ocean on one of their beach vacations and Gertie rescued him. Afterward, Daniel felt a new attachment to his family. But as his siblings drifted apart over the years, he grew wounded and bitter, wondering why they didn’t want to be connected as he did.
Just as Klara and Simon expressed in their chapters, Daniel also finds family to be a source of both comfort and distress. Daniel’s story about the time that he almost drowned reveals why he was so hurt by Klara and Simon going to San Francisco. His feeling that they did not want to be connected to him led him, in turn, to pull away from them.
Themes
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At 2:00 a.m., Daniel visits Raj and Ruby’s website. They now perform together in Las Vegas, and as Daniel scans the site, he observes that their show looks gaudy. Raj has largely kept Ruby away from the Golds. The last time he saw Ruby, when she was a preteen, Raj was teaching her the Jaws of Life. Daniel didn’t understand why Raj would want to re-create the image of Klara hanging from a rope, but Raj argued that he was keeping Klara’s memory alive. Still, Daniel regrets not being closer to Ruby, just as he regretted not being closer to Klara. Noticing that Raj and Ruby will begin a monthlong run in New York City in two weeks, Daniel writes Raj a rather formal email, inviting them to Thanksgiving in Albany.
Even as Raj and Daniel have fought in the past, their shared history draws them back together. Though Daniel doesn’t know Ruby very well, her connection to Klara represents an unbreakable bond that holds them together. Additionally, the fact that Ruby has taken up Klara’s acts demonstrates the legacy that Klara has left behind. Ruby not only carries on Klara’s life through her genes, but she also builds on her mother’s work. Raj acknowledges this in saying that Ruby keeps Klara’s memory alive.
Themes
The next morning, the phone wakes Daniel, who has slept in until 11:00 a.m. It’s Eddie O’Donoghue, the FBI agent assigned to Klara’s case. Eddie asks to meet Daniel that afternoon, saying that he has a few things to share. Daniel agrees to meet. When Daniel hangs up, Gertie appears in his room, asking who he was talking to. Daniel says no one and tells her that he’s been suspended. He’s frustrated that she can still make him feel like a child.
This moment emphasizes how, without his job, Daniel feels lost. He sleeps in and his mother prods him about what he’s doing, making him feel as though he has reverted to being a child. For many of the characters, work represents a major source of meaning in their lives, and so without it Daniel feels purposeless and unfulfilled.
Themes
Gertie moved in with Daniel in the fall of 2003, after he visited her in New York in May. In her apartment, he found a load of prescription pills for various ailments, he noticed a glass of wine on the counter surrounded by fruit flies, and he saw all the windows were covered in packing paper. Seeing the house in such disarray, he insisted that Gertie move in with him, and she agreed. Varya was living in California, but she came home to help clean out the furniture, from Saul’s pea-green velvet chair to the bunk beds.
Packing up their home illustrates how objects can reveal the bonds of family and shared experiences. In the absence of their father, the pea-green chair reminds them of the memories they shared with him. Likewise, the bunk beds hold memories of the four children together, even though the four kids have not been together since last night of Saul’s shiva.
Themes
As Daniel and Varya packed up Gertie’s apartment, Daniel found Varya crying in her old bunk bed. He wished he could touch her—for a long time, he felt hurt by her habit of refusing to touch and her general distance. She said she was thinking about when she used to sleep there. When she tried to climb down, the ladder broke off, and Daniel held his arms out to help lower her to the floor.
Varya’s obsession with cleanliness and protecting others, which is explored more fully in her own section of the book, clearly hurts her relationships, as it creates distance between herself and Daniel.
Themes
