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Part 7, Chapter 2
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
A week later, Somerset sets off for England and decides to stop in Paris on the way to see Isabel. Isabel and Gray are planning to move back to the U.S., and she tells Somerset that Gray has found work in the oil business in Dallas. Somerset sees a copy of Larry’s book on a side table at Isabel’s apartment. She says it just arrived in the mail that morning. Somerset tells Isabel that he’s just seen Larry; they were in Toulon, burying Sophie. Isabel hadn’t known Sophie was dead, and Somerset tells her that Sophie’s throat was slit before someone threw her into the ocean. He then says he thinks she killed Sophie. He says he ran into Sophie in Toulon last summer, and she said that she had found alcohol when Isabel left her waiting on the day they were supposed to go to a dress fitting.
The novel continues to unravel the mystery surrounding Sophie’s decision to leave Paris and Isabel’s role in what happened. Somerset puts it in straightforward terms when he accuses Isabel of killing Sophie. That accusation also shows Isabel in a different light. While it has been clear throughout the novel that her priorities are different from Larry’s—she wants wealth and security while he wants spiritual insight—this passage broaches the possibility that she is willing to act with a kind of premeditated malice and cruelty to try and get what she wants.
Themes
Somerset says he thinks Isabel intentionally missed the appointment and left the alcohol waiting for Sophie on purpose to tempt her out of sobriety. At first, Isabel denies it, but then she says she did plant the alcohol there. If Sophie didn’t touch it, Isabel says she had planned to make the best of the situation. But when Sophie took it, Isabel knew that she had been right to be suspicious of her. Somerset says, “You cut her throat as surely as if you’d drawn the knife yourself.” Isabel says, “She was bad, bad, bad. I’m glad she’s dead.” Isabel asks Somerset not to tell Larry, and he says he would never consider it.
Isabel confesses that she intentionally tempted Sophie out of sobriety, which ultimately leads to Sophie’s death. The passage sets up a direct comparison between Sophie and Isabel. The novel argues that while most people at the time might have seen Isabel as an upstanding person due to her wealth and connections, she is actually evil, as she premeditatedly sets Sophie on a path that leads to death; Sophie—who Isabel claims is evil—may have sought refuge in alcohol, sex, and drugs, but, the novel argues, that doesn’t make her a bad person. With that in mind, the novel argues again that social expectations and conformity hopelessly distort what is actually meaningful in life, elevating someone like Isabel, who is cruel and malicious, over someone like Sophie, who is good at heart but suffering and in pain.
Themes
Somerset picks up Larry’s book and looks at it. It’s not what he would have expected; instead, it’s a book of essays on well-known historical figures, including emperors, painters, and writers. Somerset thinks Larry must have chosen the particular people he wrote about because each of them was considered successful in a different way. Larry must have wanted, Somerset thinks, to examine what that success added up to. Isabel asks Somerset if he thinks less of her. Somerset says that he (Somerset) is a very immoral person, and when someone he’s fond of does something bad, he doesn’t stop liking them. Gray then comes home, and Somerset says goodbye to both Isabel and Gray.
While Larry’s book takes up the question of success in the lives of various well-known historical figures, the novel itself seems to present a similar investigation into the lives of less well-known figures of the author’s present day. With that in mind, each character in the novel represents a different approach to life and a different idea about what success looks like. The novel then follows those characters, and the ideas they represent, along their various paths to show which ideas lead where and which approaches to life might lead to real, lasting meaning.
Themes
