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Chapter 46
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Inheritance of Loss, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism and Globalization
Poverty vs. Privilege
Home and Belonging
Gender and Misogyny
Power and Humiliation
Summary
Analysis
In the aftermath of the parade, the police had been hunting down the GNLF boys. Wanted men dodge the police by sleeping in the homes of the wealthier people in town like Lola and Noni, whose houses they know will not be searched.
As the police hunt down the boys from the GNLF, the affluence of many of the judge’s neighbors continues to show its downside: though they are not searched by the police, the homes become targets for the boys to sleep in.
Themes
The town begins to fall into anarchy. Screams can be heard in the police station, and the trees are hung with limbs of enemies. Many people take up the opportunity to make anyone they didn’t like disappear, or to avenge family vendettas. Residents are shocked by the violence, but also by how mundane the events have become—how commonplace extraordinary hatred is.
Meanwhile, the police continue their violence and humiliation as tools of power. Like with the drunk, it is never clear whether the people they torture have actually committed crimes, or whether they are simply using these tactics to assert dominance over the society.
Themes
