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Part 7, Chapter 3
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
Somerset receives a Christmas card that year from Isabel and Gray. It’s been postmarked in Dallas, so he assumes that the family must be settled there. Somerset imagines that they’re popular in Dallas and are assets to their community. He thinks that Isabel is “gracious” and “tactful” while Gray is the “quintessence of the Regular guy.”
Isabel again seems to have gotten everything she wanted, a place in a thriving community backed by a substantial fortune. Somerset’s description of Gray as the “quintessence of the Regular guy” seems pointedly acerbic as the novel again takes aim at the kind of conformity, which, it argues, ultimately leads to emptiness in life.
Themes
