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Part 1, Chapter 10
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
After Somerset leaves Chicago, he doesn’t see Elliott until June of the next year, when Elliott comes to London. When he arrives in London, Elliott is exasperated with Larry. Larry did travel to Paris, Elliott says, and Elliott had been prepared to launch him into society, but Larry had either ignored or turned down each of Elliot’s invitations to lunch and dinner. After that, Elliott says, he was done with Larry. That fall, Somerset travels to Paris and happens to see Larry sitting at a café. Somerset leaves the group he’s with to talk to Larry, and Larry invites him to lunch the next day.
In his interactions with Elliott, Larry reveals that he is not pursuing the same goal as Elliott, namely, social status. It’s worth noting that each character so far (whether it’s Somerset, Isabel, Gray, Mrs. Bradley, or Elliott) has been flummoxed by Larry in one way or another. Isabel doesn’t know what to make of Larry's desire to “loaf,” and Elliott had assumed, incorrectly, that Larry simply wanted to see the world and return to Paris, where Larry would no doubt be happy to accept a reserved spot among society’s elite. But Larry doesn’t want any of the things that his community or society as a whole seems to consider worth pursuing, creating a chasm of misunderstanding between Larry and the people closest to him.
Themes
