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Part 1, Chapter 6
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Razor’s Edge, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Wisdom and the Meaning of Life
Social Norms and Conformity
Trauma and Self-Destruction
Snobbishness, Social Status, and Cosmopolitanism
Truth and the Problem of Evil
Summary
Analysis
The next day, Somerset goes to the public library. There, he’s surprised to see Larry, who’s reading William James’s Principles of Psychology. It’s not the kind of book he would expect to be read by a young former aviator who had been up until five the night before dancing. Somerset asks why he’s reading it, and Larry says he’s reading it because he’s very ignorant. Larry explains that he didn’t feel like he could go to college after the war. He didn’t think he could act like a freshman and thought that the other students and professors wouldn’t like him. Somerset says that instruction from knowledgeable teachers can help save you time; otherwise, you might go down dead ends. Larry says maybe he’ll find his purpose down one of those dead ends. Somerset asks Larry what he wants to do since he doesn’t want to work. “Loaf,” Larry says.
Somerset begins to get a clearer view of Larry in this chapter. To Somerset, Larry seems to be someone who is earnestly devoted to studying, staying at the library for hours on end while reading a single book. That book might not be esoteric, but it isn’t the kind of book, Somerset says, that one would read for entertainment. Somerset’s remark that teachers can help save time foreshadows the teacher whom Larry finds later in the novel and who will help Larry travel a significant distance down the path toward spiritual insight. Notably, Larry’s idea of “loafing” seems to mean studying what he wants at his own pace rather than lolling or lazing around, doing nothing, but he refrains from telling people more specifics about his plan, highlighting his propensity for privacy.
Themes
