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Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Vanishing Half, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race and Identity
Loss, Memory, and Inheritance
Companionship, Support, and Independence
Class and Privilege
Summary
Analysis
Jude takes a Greyhound bus from Mallard to Los Angeles in 1978. She has spent the last 10 years living in her grandmother’s house and disliking her existence in Mallard. Everyone at school calls her racist names because she has darker skin than them. Wanting to get out of town, she has often fantasized about her father appearing and taking her back to D.C., even though she knows he’s not a good man. In fact, she and Early have developed a good relationship, since he’s now the closest thing she has to a father. But he doesn’t live with Desiree all of the time. Instead, he leaves for extended periods to chase down fugitives, but he always comes back and stays in Mallard for a while.
Jude’s experience growing up in Mallard has, it seems, been as challenging as Early predicted it would be when he told Desiree about his own experience as a dark-skinned person living in a town full of light-skinned people with colorist ideas. Although returning to Mallard certainly made sense for Desiree and enabled her to protect her daughter from Sam’s abuse, it also meant raising Jude in a community plagued by problematic ideas about skin tone, though it’s worth noting that Jude would have encountered racism anywhere in the South (and, more broadly, the United States), suggesting that there are certain things from which parents can never fully protect their children.
Themes
Jude remembers how her father mistreated her mother. Once, she and Desiree went to the public pool and started taking off their clothes to go swimming, but then Desiree saw that she still had bruises on her legs from Sam beating her, so she put her clothes back on and told Jude to swim without her. Another time, Jude’s father told her to be careful around her mother, claiming that Desiree thought she was better than them because she had lighter skin.
What Sam says about Desiree thinking she’s better than him and Jude is a perfect example of how colorism ends up pitting people in the Black community against each other. However, it’s untrue that Desiree thinks she’s better than Sam and Jude—Sam is simply insecure and vindictive. Still, his comment underlines just how destructive colorism truly is, since Sam uses it in this moment to infuse tension between members of his own family.
Themes
To get through high school, Jude focused on running. It’s the only thing that gave her a sense of escape. She joined the track team and won multiple races, but everyone at school still treated her poorly. Still, she fixated on running because it was her ticket out of Mallard—and, sure enough, she eventually received a running scholarship to UCLA, which is why she’s now on the Greyhound bound for Los Angeles.
Faced with constant colorism and discrimination, Jude seemingly had no choice but to throw herself into a passion, using running as an escape from the mistreatment she experienced in Mallard. Now that she’s going to college, her devotion to this coping mechanism has actually paid off, implying that sometimes the only productive way to deal with hardship is to find an outlet that will lead to a sense of independence—which, in turn, enables people to extricate themselves from undesirable circumstances.
Themes
Early still hasn’t found Stella. Desiree holds out hope that Stella will come back to Mallard on her own someday, but she knows this is extremely unlikely. Nonetheless, Desiree can’t bring herself to leave Mallard, feeling guilty about the idea of leaving her mother alone again. Plus, she has built a life for herself. She’s not married to Early, but they have a strong connection. Her mother is critical of their relationship, disliking how Early comes and goes, but Desiree doesn’t pay attention to Adele’s disapproval.
As a young girl, Desiree couldn’t wait to leave Mallard. Now, though, she finds herself stuck in her hometown once again. Although she originally had no problem abandoning her mother, as an adult she can’t find it within herself to leave Adele behind for a second time, suggesting that she feels a certain sense of responsibility to support and care for her aging mother, perhaps because—in the aftermath of Stella’s disappearance—she now knows what it feels like to be abandoned by a loved one.
Themes
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After discovering that Stella moved to Boston, the trail went cold. There were records of Stella living in the city, but then she must have gotten married and changed her name, making it harder to piece together what happened. But Early isn’t particularly upset that he can’t find Stella. He’s not even sure he wants to successfully track her down. At first, he genuinely wanted to find her, but that was just because he wanted to please Desiree. Now, he realizes that Stella clearly doesn’t want to be found, and part of him respects that decision, though he doesn’t want to disappoint Desiree.
Early’s respect for Stella’s decision to disappear implies that he doesn’t see “passing” as an inherently bad thing. Of course, it was somewhat unfair of Stella to abruptly abandon Desiree, but if she wants to pose as a white woman for the rest of her life, that’s her decision. For the first time, then, the novel subtly reveals its own neutrality when it comes to the idea of passing. In other words, the novel doesn’t necessarily condemn Stella for deciding to live the life of a white person.
Themes
Nobody Jude meets in Los Angeles has ever heard of Mallard, partially because the town isn’t listed on any maps. A young man from Arkansas named Reese doesn’t believe Mallard isn’t on any maps, so she takes him to the library one day and shows him. As they lean over the map, Jude can feel the proximity of his body. She first met him at a Halloween party. She felt awkward at the party but fell into easy conversation with Reese, who was dressed as a cowboy. She liked his southern accent and his striking good looks, and they started spending all their time together.
Finally, Jude gets to build a life of her own. In childhood, she had no choice but to follow her mother to Mallard—a move that secured her safety from Sam but also forced her to face the colorism running rampant in her mother’s hometown. Now, though, she has escaped to Los Angeles, where people are less concentrated on skin color. It’s therefore easier for her to work on establishing a new life.
Themes
