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Chapter 5
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
The night after they sleep together for the first time, Reese gets into bed with Jude and starts kissing her. She stops him, wanting to define their relationship, and it becomes clear to both of them that they each want to be together. They start kissing again, but Reese stops Jude when she starts to take off his pants. He doesn’t want to undress—something she eventually learns as their relationship progresses. One night, she asks if they can keep the light on because she wants to see him, but he shrinks away and says he doesn’t want to be seen. He sleeps on the couch that night.
Although Jude initially felt as if she understood Reese’s transition from female to male, it now becomes clear that she hasn’t quite grasped the nuances of his personal journey. The fact that she wants to see him while they make love is a testament to how connected she feels to him, but it also suggests that she still isn’t thinking about things from his perspective. For Reese, his body is the only thing that doesn’t accord with his identity as a man, so he’d rather not be looked at while having sex. But Jude doesn’t seem to understand his hesitancy, thus creating tension in their relationship.
Themes
Later that summer, Jude decides to get a new job. She wants to help Reese save up for top surgery, but she can’t tell him about her intentions because he never lets her pay for anything—he never accepts help. Still, Jude starts working for a company that caters fancy parties in wealthy places like Malibu. The parties are full of rich white people, many of whom work in the entertainment industry. When she’s not catering during the fall semester, Jude spends her time thinking about the human body. She gives Reese his steroid injections, which makes her want to learn more about health and the body, so she enrolls in an anatomy class. To her surprise, she ends up enjoying the class.
Despite Jude’s slight difficulty grasping the challenges Reese deals with as a trans man, she is quite supportive and helps him become the version of himself that he wants to be. She is, in other words, a caring partner who will do whatever she can to help Reese, even if she’s still learning about the best ways to support and respect his wishes.
Themes
One evening, Jude catches Reese staring at her. He says that he just likes to look at her, but she doesn’t believe him, which just makes him annoyed—he doesn’t like when she acts as if he’s lying when he compliments her looks. Regardless of Jude’s belief that nobody could ever find her dark skin beautiful, Reese reminds her that he’s not like the people back in Mallard.
Jude’s unwillingness to believe that Reese actually finds her beautiful is evidence of the ways in which she has internalized the racism and colorism she grew up around in Mallard. It’s clear, then, how damaging such viewpoints can be to a person’s self-image and confidence.
Themes
Jude starts dreaming about her father. One night, she wakes up troubled from one of these dreams, prompting her and Reese to talk about what it’s like to be so far from their families. Reese hasn’t seen his family in years and has no contact with them. He left because his father caught him kissing a girl while dressed like a man. His father beat him with a belt, saying that Reese would have to take punishment like “a man” if that’s what he wanted to be.
It’s clear that Reese has had some traumatic experiences surrounding his family’s inability to accept his gender identity. His story about his father’s bigotry adds a certain amount of perspective to Jude’s experience growing up and facing colorism and racism. Although she had to deal with colorist discrimination in Mallard, she knew that, at the very least, her mother and Early were there to accept her for who she was—Reese, on the other hand, had nobody to accept him until he moved away from home.
Themes
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Reese sometimes thinks about what it’d be like if he went home. Part of him wants to go back to challenge his father, since he’s bigger and stronger now. But another part of him just wants to walk around his hometown as a man, knowing nobody would recognize him. And yet, his mother would still know it was him. Jude listens to Reese talk, and then they start kissing. She reaches for his shirt, but he rolls away and goes to the bathroom. When he returns, his shirt is gone but the bandage is still there—he tells her that he needs the bandage, and she says that’s okay, delighting in the feel of his skin beneath her fingers.
When Reese allows Jude to see him without his shirt on, he opens up to her in a very intimate way. It seems as if he does this simply to satisfy Jude, who has wanted to get closer to him in this way. Until now, he has made a point of respecting his own wish to stay clothed during sex. The fact that he makes an exception in this scene suggests that he’s willing to go to great lengths to please Jude, indicating just how committed he is to their relationship—they’re so close, it seems, that he’s willing to step outside his comfort zone because he knows he’s safe with Jude.
Themes
Reese met Barry not long after moving to Los Angeles. He was at a nightclub when Barry came on to him, but he declined Barry’s sexual advance. Later that night, Barry asked him to dinner—not because he wanted to have sex with Reese, but because he could tell Reese was hungry. And it was true: Reese was starving. Barry took him to a nearby diner and asked about his life, eventually saying he could stay at his apartment if he wanted; again, not because Barry wanted to have sex with Reese, but simply because he wanted to help. He also revealed that he knew Reese was trans, something he openly accepted. That night, he gave Reese a haircut, fixing the lopsided job Reese himself had done at the truck stop.
Barry gives Reese the support and acceptance that has been missing in his life. Whereas Reese’s parents never came to terms with who he really was and instead wanted him to embrace a female identity, Barry immediately accepts Reese as a man and, more than that, offers to help him. The novel thus implies that it’s sometimes necessary for people to actively seek out and build support networks instead of relying on family.
Themes
Jude works for the catering company for the entire fall semester. In December, the company is hired to cater the retirement party of an extremely wealthy business executive. At one point during the party, a young blond woman with piercing blue eyes comes over to Jude and asks for some wine. It’s obvious that she’s not old enough to drink, but she convinces Jude to pour her a glass. She mentions that she’s the daughter of the powerful businessman, and that her mother hasn’t arrived at the party yet. But then a woman in a long fur coat enters the party—it’s the girl’s mother. Jude turns to look at the woman and suddenly drops a bottle of wine on the expensive carpet. As she stares at the woman, she can hardly believe her eyes.
The chapter ends on a mysterious note, as it’s unclear who, exactly, Jude looks at just before dropping the wine bottle. However, it’s reasonable to assume that the woman she has just laid eyes on is Stella, since she probably wouldn’t have such an astonished reaction to anyone else. If so, it becomes clear that Stella’s decision to “pass” as white ended up leading to great wealth and prosperity, since the party is full of rich and successful people.
Themes
