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Chapter 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in One Day, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Relationships and Time
Social Class
Coming of Age and the Search for Meaning
Addiction and Recovery
Summary
Analysis
Sunday 15, July 1990. Emma now works at Loco Caliente, a Tex-Mex restaurant in the Camden Town area of London. Her manager, Scott McKenzie, is a 39-year-old man with a business management degree who had once hoped to be a big shot in business. Scott introduces Ian, a new employee who sounds like he’s imitating an American accent. Paddy, who works behind the bar, makes fun of Ian to Emma. The same 45 minutes of mariachi music loops 12 times in an 8-hour shift. Emma wonders what she’s doing with her life.
The Tex-Mex restaurant that Emma works at is even further from her goal of making a difference in the world than her first job. The 39-year-old Scott, whose business degree suggests that he once had ambitions, now represents a cautionary tale of what could happen to Emma if she doesn’t find a way to reconcile her ideals with her need to make a living. The looping mariachi music represents the monotony of low-paying work.
Themes
Dexter writes to Emma from Bombay, saying that he’s trying to listen to the music and read the books she sent him but is finding it difficult. He writes that India is incredible and that he’s writing his current letter drunk at lunch. He’s been taking photos and says he met a woman on a train who might have a job for him involving a TV show about travel for young people. He says he enjoyed seeing her in a play last time he was in London, and he promises that he has something important to tell her.
Based on his letter, Dexter’s life seems to be much more exciting than Emma’s, as he continues to travel the globe and gets a potentially lucrative job offer without even trying. Still, the fact that Dexter still seems to be constantly drunk suggests that he may still be troubled. Dexter tries to live an outwardly celebratory life to hide the more complicated way he sometimes feels on the inside.
Themes
Emma trains Ian, showing him around the restaurant. She asks what he’d rather be doing than working a restaurant and he admits that he’s a stand-up comedian. He asks her the same, and she feels ridiculous saying playwright, so she just says she has no other ambitions.
Emma’s exchange with Ian shows her lack of self-esteem, as she sees her work and writing as too insignificant to mention. Like Emma, Ian shows how working-class people often have to make compromises to earn a living, only pursuing other passions on the side.
Themes
Continuing his letter, Dexter says that the important thing he has to tell Emma is that he thinks she’s afraid of her own happiness. He thinks she has low self-esteem and should be more ambitious and that she should stop pretending to not be pretty. He says he knows she feels lost but trusts her to find the way again, then pauses the letter, saying he has even more life-changing news to share.
Dexter’s advice to Emma about needing to act more confidently has some truth to it, but in some ways, he is also talking to himself. Although Dexter can appear arrogant from the outside, he too often feels lost and unsure of his future, in spite of how glamorous his current present looks.
Themes
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Back at the restaurant, Emma continues to show Ian around. He asks what Emma what she’s doing after work and invites her to his comedy gig. He says it’s not a date, but Emma suspects it would be. A part of her thinks she should accept, but she turns him down, saying maybe another time.
One of the many uncertainties in Emma’s life in the moment is the status of her relationship with Dexter. Although they don’t date and currently only communicate by letter, Emma still feels hesitant about committing to even a date with anyone else.
Themes
Continuing his letter again, Dexter says he wishes Emma were with him in India at the moment. He sends her a list of instructions. First, she should quit her job. Second, she should leave her flatmate Tilly Killick and live with Dexter when he returns, but just as a flatmate. Third, she should book an open return flight to arrive in Delhi before August 1st, Dexter’s birthday. There, they’ll meet at the Taj Mahal at noon. He promises to wire her money for the trip, reassuring her that he knows the idea is crazy but hopes she’ll go through with it anyway.
Dexter’s letter of instructions to Emma reflects his own privileged way of looking at the world, while also showing that he has some awareness of the wealth disparity between himself and Emma as he offers to pay for her. Dexter wants a spontaneous action to turn his life around, but he also wants Emma to do it for him and meet him on his own terms.
Themes
In Bombay, Dexter looks at the letter he’s finished writing and sees that it’s 11 pages, the longest thing he’s written since his finals. He showers and then comes back to the letter a little more sober, and he begins to wonder if he should actually send it. He’s worried that he was too honest about his feelings and also that he lied in places, like pretending to listen to the music she sent him. Still, he decides to go through with it, putting it into an airmail envelope in his copy of Howard’s End that Emma sent him.
The length of Dexter’s letter to Emma shows how she helps him get more in touch with his feelings and emotions. Still, the fact that he lies in his letter, pretending to have tried to read the books Emma sent shows that even at his most uninhibited, he can’t admit the truth about himself. Dexter’s decision to send the letter regardless of its flaws shows how he is beginning to accept himself and try to improve.
Themes
That night, Dexter goes to a bar and accidentally leaves behind his copy of Howard’s End. A German engineering student named Heidi finds the letter. She finds it interesting and wants to make sure that it gets to Emma, but there’s no address or other way to find either Emma or Dexter. She holds on to the letter and the book for many years, even after she gets married and has four children.
The minor character Heidi, who never reappears in the novel, shows how Dexter and Emma’s story is just one out of many. The fact that Dexter loses a letter that he put so much work into through a careless accident is typical of this point in his life, illustrating how in spite of his moments of introspection, he lives carelessly.
Themes
