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Chapter 8
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Erasure, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race and Identity
Familial Obligation vs. Personal Needs
Artistic Integrity vs. Commercial Success
Authenticity
Summary
Analysis
Monk has always been an Ellison: he had Ellison tastes, “an Ellison way of speaking.” His grandfather had been a physician. He liked being an Ellison when he was young but came to resent it as a teenager. Monk’s mother’s maiden name was Parker, and she came from a family of farmers who lived on the Chesapeake Bay. Monk has a bunch of cousins on that side, “with names like Janelle and Tyrell,” whom he barely knows. He saw that side of the family only once, on a visit to their farm house. “They frightened me,” Monk recalls. Had he had more life experience, he “would have liked them, found them thriving and interesting,” he thinks now. He remembers that Mother always seemed ashamed of her family.
In light of the troubling revelations Monk has just learned about his father, he begins to question all the ways his father has negatively influenced his beliefs, tastes, and sense of self. Monk’s reflections on the shame he (and his mother) felt toward his mother’s side of the family suggests that he learned to look down on a less refined, cultured form of Blackness, seeing the Parker side of the family as inferior and underachieving, resulting in some degree of internalized racism on Monk’s part.
Themes
Back in the present, Monk is in the garage looking at the table (which is now more of a stool) he’s been working on. He considers how his mother must have felt when she read the love letters. Though Monk’s father had ordered Monk’s mother to burn the contents of the boxes upon his passing, he must have known she’d read them. Monk wonders whether it would be worse for his mother to go on believing that she was wrong to feel inadequate in her marriage or to now know that those feelings were not all in her head.
Monk’s question about whether it would be better for his mother to know the truth about his father or to go on believing a lie is really a question about himself: is it better for Monk to go on pretending that the person is father shaped him to be is the best, most authentic version of himself, or should he take a step back and reflect on how the ways his father taught him to see himself and the world are in fact flawed and even self-destructive?
Themes
Later, Yul struggles to hold back his excitement over Monk’s new book deal, though he’s not quite on board with Monk’s idea to play the character of “Stagg R. Leigh,” ex-con, on his phone call with Paula Baderman. On the phone call later, Monk (as Mr. Leigh) addresses the editor coolly and curtly. He derides the “white people on the beach [who] will get a big kick out of” his forthcoming novel, a comment he knows will excite Paula.
Monk’s choice to play the role of “Stagg R. Leigh” on the phone with Paula Baderman, rather than accepting authorship of My Pafology, suggests that he’s not yet ready to abandon his artistic integrity. He still clings to sense of self his father’s tastes and values carved out for him, and authoring a book like My Pafology would contradict that sense of self.
Themes
Later, after the first half of the advance arrives, Monk tells Mother to pack a small bag—he’s going to be taking her on a little trip. She suggests they all go to the beach house, and Monk agrees. He tells Mother they’ll leave tomorrow. Later, he calls Bill and tells him about his plans to take Mother to the beach house for a few weeks and asks Bill to join them. When Bill protests, Monk says he can bring his new lover, Adam. Bill says he’ll see what he can do. After they hang up, Monk considers how Bill is “finally finding himself, […] but seemingly losing everything else in the process.”
Monk’s reflection on all that Bill is “seemingly losing” in his process of “finally finding himself” perhaps reflects Monk’s own existential conflict over how his recent discovery about their father’s affair calls into question everything Monk has come to believe about himself. Monk has centered his life on becoming a person his father could be proud of, and now he’s forced to ask himself whether that person is really so upstanding after all. If Monk tries to find himself—that is, the person he could be on his own terms, independent of his father’s approval—it would mean “losing everything” he has ever thought he knew about himself.
Themes
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The next day, Monk drives himself, Mother, and Lorraine to the beach house. When they arrive, the guard at the gate to the beach recognizes Monk, addressing him by name. He introduces himself as Maynard Boatwright. The name is familiar to Monk, though he doesn’t recognize this old man as the buff ex-marine he’d been when Monk was a boy. Later, Mother and Lorraine set to work tidying up the beach house. Monk walks toward the beach and considers how far he should take his Stagg R. Leigh character. He decides he’ll talk to the editor a couple more times but not take it any further than that.
Monk’s question of how far he should take his Stagg R. Leigh character is about whether he will continue to perform the role of Stagg in order to distance himself from a novel he knows his father would disapprove of, or whether he’s willing to assume ownership of that work, break with his father, and become his own person. If Monk continues to play the part of Stagg, My Pafology continues to be pure performance art, and Monk can continue to deny that any part of that work derives from feelings, thoughts, or ideas he genuinely believes in.
Themes
On his walk, Monk approaches the house where Professor Tilman once lived. When a woman walks outside, Monk mentions having once known the professor. The woman says the professor was her uncle and that he died three years ago—she inherited the house. Monk introduces himself to the woman, who introduces herself as Marilyn Tilman. When Monk says he’s going in the town to do some shopping later, Marilyn suggests she ride along with him. Sitting in the car with Marilyn later, Monk realizes how rare it is for him to be sitting so near a woman he feels attracted to. He feels suddenly self-conscious.
Monk’s self-consciousness around Marilyn underscores just how rare it is for him to open up to or be vulnerable around others. More often, he hides beyond a persona of artistry and intellectual pretension, even if he doesn’t realize it consciously.
Themes
