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Chapter 12
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Leavers, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Cultural Identity and Belonging
Migration, Change, and Happiness
Racism, Cultural Insensitivity, and Implicit Bias
Self-Deception and Rationalization
Parenthood, Support, and Expectations
Summary
Analysis
Daniel attends summer school at Carlough and lives with Peter and Kay in Ridgeborough. He dutifully attends class, but he can’t escape the boredom lurking all around him. During one particularly slow lecture, he sits behind a student playing online poker on his laptop. The student is a bad player, and this irks Daniel so much that he leans over and says, “Don’t do it.” When the guy still places a bad bet, Daniel yells, “Damn it!”, attracting the professor’s attention. At home, Peter and Kay are cautious around him, trying to connect by talking about his classes. At one point, Peter invites him to his study and puts on a Hendrix song, and he and Daniel bond over the music. “I’m glad you’re back in school. Glad you’re back at home,” Peter says. “How easy it was to make Peter proud, how hungry he was for Peter’s approval,” Ko notes.
Daniel’s return to Ridgeborough goes well, but it’s evident that he’s simply going through the motions of what Peter and Kay want him to do. Trying to meet their expectations, he dutifully attends lectures, but his mind is elsewhere, as made clear by how engrossed he becomes in another student’s online poker game. And yet, this existence is at least mildly rewarding, if only because Daniel is “hungry” for the approval of his adoptive parents. When he relishes the feeling of making Peter “proud,” readers see how much he genuinely wants to live up to Peter and Kay’s expectations. The problem, of course, is that their expectations don’t align with what he actually wants, even if he himself isn’t sure what that is.
Themes
One day, Daniel runs into Cody at the supermarket, where Cody works. That night, he goes with Cody to a secluded pond and they smoke marijuana together, talking all the while about inconsequential things. After, they go to a local bar, where there’s an open mic. Although everybody seems to like the music, Daniel finds the band laughably bad, so he goes home early to work on an essay, which is due the next day. However, he gets distracted and ends up texting Angel, who finally replies by asking him to stop contacting her. “I wish you the best,” she says at the end of the text. Encouraged by this sentiment, he sends her yet another message: “i’m going to do better for you.”
Angel makes it clear that she doesn’t want to hear from Daniel, but he chooses to ignore this message. In fact, he deceives himself by thinking that her well wishes outweigh her scorn. Once again, then, he focuses on only one part of a broader narrative in order to trick himself into doing what he wants, this time using Angel’s phrase, “I wish you the best” to justify his decision to ignore the fact that she doesn’t want to hear from him again.
Themes
