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Part 5, Chapter 1
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
On Somerset’s last night in Paris, Isabel asks him to give her, Gray, and Larry a tour of the “tough” places in the city. They go to a place frequented by gangsters and a place called the Sphynx, where women dance for men. They then go to a café on the Rue de Lappe. In the café, men dance with boys, women dance with other women, and men dance with women. At that café, Isabel and Gray see Sophie, who is one of their old friends from Chicago. Sophie seems drunk and says that her in-laws kicked her out of their house in Chicago because she was tarnishing their reputations. Sophie says she has to get back to her boyfriend. After she goes, Isabel says the café is horrid, and they should leave.
Somerset’s cosmopolitan approach to life is highlighted again in this chapter, as he seems to be equally familiar and at home with Paris’s denizens of high status as he is with its grittier locales. Notably, after the group runs into Sophie, Isabel says the café where they are is horrid, even though it had been her idea to go there in the first place. Isabel’s reaction seems to suggest that she already dislikes Sophie, feelings that might stem from their time together in Chicago.
Themes
After they leave the café, the group goes to a restaurant. Isabel explains what happened to Sophie. She had married a man named Bob Macdonald, and the two were wild about each other. Then they had a baby. One night, Sophie and Bob were driving back to Chicago with their baby in the car when a drunk driver crashed into them. Bob and the baby were killed. Sophie almost went mad. Isabel said she, Gray, and their friends tried to help, but Sophie didn’t want their help. Eventually, her in-laws said they would give her an allowance if she went to live abroad. Gray says that you can’t help but feel sorry for her. Isabel says she doesn’t feel bad for her. “A normal person gets over a thing like that,” Isabel says. If one doesn’t, Isabel says, that means there was always something wrong with her from the start.
The story of Sophie’s past trauma and loss firmly establishes her as a counterpart to Larry in the novel. While Larry reacted to his trauma by seeking spiritual meaning, Sophie responded to hers by looking for self-destruction. Their respective traumas, though, led both Sophie and Larry to reject and renounce their past lives and look for something different. With that in mind, the novel implies that Larry and Sophie are much more similar than one might think at first, suggesting that if Larry hadn’t been able to find spiritual meaning, he might have followed Sophie’s path instead.
Themes
About Sophie, Isabel says, “Evil doesn’t spring from good. The evil was there always.” According to Isabel, the car accident just gave the evil that was always in Sophie a chance to manifest itself. Larry says that he remembers spending time with Sophie when they were teenagers. She used to write poetry, and, to him, it seemed quite good for someone her age. Later, he says, she had wanted to become a social worker and that her desire to help others had been moving to him. Isabel says that Sophie had been in love with Larry, but Larry says that’s not true.
Isabel’s comment that “evil doesn’t spring from good” introduces philosophical questions into the account of Sophie’s story, including the problem of evil, the idea of original sin (i.e., whether human beings are inherently sinful), and the question of whether redemption is possible. Notably, Isabel says that Sophie was in love with Larry when the two knew each other in Chicago, suggesting that Isabel’s criticism of, and harshness toward, Sophie might stem from jealousy.
Themes
