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Part 1, Chapter 7
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 lunch with Elliott, Gray Maturin, and Gray’s father, Henry. Henry says he offered Larry a job but received a letter from Larry that morning graciously declining the opportunity. “That’s very foolish of him,” Elliott says. Henry agrees. After lunch, Elliott goes to Mrs. Bradley’s house to tell her and Isabel that Larry declined the job. Mrs. Bradley tells Isabel that if Larry loves her, he ought to get a job to support them. Isabel decides to talk with Larry straightforwardly about the issue.
The novel again establishes a kind of Greek chorus (onlookers who comment on the action of a story) that critiques Larry and his decisions. This group—including Gray, Henry, Mrs. Bradley, Elliott, and Isabel— serves as a concrete manifestation of the broader social forces, values, and priorities of people in the U.S. at the time and helps to show what is considered meaningful and worth pursuing within that society. Larry then goes against the expectations of this group (and, implicitly, U.S. society as a whole) to follow his own path.
Themes
After talking with Larry, Isabel starts crying. Mrs. Bradley goes to check on her, and Isabel tells her that Larry is going to Paris. He’s going to be gone for two years, she says. Isabel says she doesn’t know what will happen after those two years, but she’s decided to wait for him. She loves him more than ever, she tells her mother. When Mrs. Bradley asks Isabel what Larry intends to do in Paris, Isabel says he’s going to “loaf.” Later, Elliott tells Somerset that while he wouldn’t tell Isabel or his sister this, he harbors a secret sympathy for Larry. It’s only natural, Elliott says, that after he saw Paris during the war—the only city worth living in, according to Elliott—he wanted to spend more time there. Elliott says that he’ll look out for Larry in Paris and will introduce him to the “right people.”
Larry shows again that he is willing to go against what other people want or expect from him to follow his own ideas and beliefs. Notably, Elliott thinks he sees some of himself in Larry. Elliott is from the United States but feels more at home in Europe in general and Paris in particular. The novel will show, though, that Larry and Elliott live in Paris for much different reasons, and Larry will not be very concerned with meeting the people whom Elliott identifies as the “right people.”
Themes
