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Chapter 60
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in This Tender Land, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family, Community, and Home
Hardship, Injustice, and Compassion
God, Fate, and Choice
Coming of Age and Personal Growth
Storytelling, Music, and Hope
Acceptance and Forgiveness
Summary
Analysis
In the morning, Odie takes the back stairs to the basement. It is nicely finished and contains an electric washing machine and clothesline. After using the toilet, he finds Dolores loading laundry into the tubs. She offers to wash Odie’s sheets and clothes, which stink, and loans him one of her own pink robes in the meantime. Odie showers then heads upstairs for breakfast. Several young women are milling around, and Odie assumes Aunt Julia runs some kind of women’s residence. The women complain about the worsening economy, alluding to mysterious customers. Aunt Julia puts Odie to work with Dolores washing sheets. He asks if she has a job. In response, Dolores asks what Odie thinks this house is.
The unexpected opulence of the basement suggests that Aunt Julia’s work—whatever it is—allows her to live comfortably. The kindness of Dolores and the other women shows that Odie has found yet another community of people who care for one another. Like every other group Odie has come across, the women in Aunt Julia’s house lament the economic crisis, which has affected their mysterious business. The presence of many women, male guests, frequent loads of laundry, and Aunt Julia’s discomfort around Odie all hint that the business she runs involves sex work, though Odie does not realize this. Odie’s ignorance underscores his youth and naivety.
Themes
Aunt Julia visits Odie in the attic. They speak about the last time they saw each other, when Odie’s mother—Rosalee—died. Julia describes Rosalee as a wonderful big sister, and she tells Odie about inheriting the pink house from a close friend. Odie asks why she didn’t come for him and Albert after their father died. Aunt Julia assumed they were already settled in at school with other children. Odie tells her about the quiet room and how he wishes he could have lived here instead. Aunt Julia promises to make it up to him. Later, Odie plays his harmonica for the women. Aunt Julia asks for the full story of Odie’s journey. After hearing the truth, she begs for his forgiveness.
Although Aunt Julia attempts to reconnect with Odie, the reader may sense that she is concealing something from Odie. Odie feels Aunt Julia is indifferent to his and Albert’s situation at Lincoln—after all, she did not bother to retrieve them. Odie struggles to articulate in words the pain he feels at Aunt Julia’s abandonment. Later in the evening, his harmonica music at last seems to convey the depth of his suffering, prompting Julia to ask for his full story and, afterward, his forgiveness. Here, the novel explores the complex situations in which family members fail one another and the emotional reckoning that comes with that.
Themes
