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Chapter 3
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
Monday, July 15, 1991. Emma and Ian are still working at Caliente Loco. One day, Scott calls Emma into his office and says he’s leaving to go work at an Italian restaurant. He offers to appoint Emma as his replacement. Emma starts crying and isn’t sure why. Embarrassed, she tells Scott she’s just depressed. She says she’ll get Scott an answer tomorrow.
The fact that Emma is still working at the Tex-Mex restaurant after a year shows how she is beginning get set in her ways, in danger into turning into someone like her manager Scott—a point that gets emphasized when Scott offers Emma his position. She cries, even though it’s a promotion, because of what it represents about her life’s trajectory.
Themes
Emma feels like she’s failed in London and considers returning home to her parents. She’s considered other lines of work, like publishing, but there’s a recession and jobs are scarce. She writes a poem about how much she hates nachos. Just then, Ian tells Emma that Dexter has come in to see her and also brought a girl. She tries to send Ian over to wait his table, but Ian says Dexter has asked for her.
Emma’s life of working in drudgery continues to contrast with Dexter’s more glamorous one as he comes and goes as he pleases, bringing new girlfriends with him. But while Dexter’s life may seem better than Emma’s, this passage also emphasizes how after Dexter lost that 11-page letter he planned to send Emma, he just went back to his old ways.
Themes
When Emma comes over to tell Dexter the specials, he gives her a big hug, which has been his habit ever since he started working in the TV industry. He introduces his friend Naomi, and both of them are clearly drunk. Dexter tries to buy Emma a drink, but she refuses, then he makes a big deal of trying to tip Emma, which embarrasses her.
Dexter’s new habit of hugging shows how he has become more physically intimate in social settings but also perhaps more superficial, treating everyone in his life like his coworkers in television. His drunkenness also continues to be a sign of how he avoids facing truths that he might have to if he were sober.
Themes
Dexter leaves the restaurant in Camden Town and goes to Primrose Hill. He has given up photography, knowing it would take too much work to become a master, but television, on the other hand, has a place for him right now. New broadcasting laws have opened the market to independent companies that want to make new, youth-focused programs. Dexter has helped produce short segments and has heard that they might want him in front of a camera someday.
Dexter’s decision to give up on photography because it would take too much effort shows again how he wants to uphold the status quo rather than doing anything to change himself. The new changes in television media show how British culture changes over the course of the story, with the sensationalized youth-focused programs showing how British culture encourages Dexter’s superficial ways of thinking.
Themes
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Emma comes to meet Dexter. She gets angry at him for coming in to laugh at her restaurant with his girlfriend. Dexter says Naomi isn’t his girlfriend, although they are having sex. Emma gives Dexter back the money he tipped her, saying you don’t tip friends. Dexter apologizes. He talks about meeting Naomi at a wrap party. Emma zones out—she used to want to be in a relationship with Dexter but now feels numb when he talks about his sex life.
Dexter thinks that he can solve his disagreements with Emma by using money, since money has helped him out of many of the other challenges that he’s faced in his life so far. Even though Emma needs money, she doesn’t like how this turns her relationship with Dexter into a transactional one, something that he doesn’t understand because he’s never been in the position of needing money.
Themes
Dexter and Emma talk about a couple sitting near them in the park who are making out aggressively. Emma says Dexter is obsessed with sex. Dexter says Emma should lighten up and take ecstasy with him some time. He asks why she doesn’t go out with Ian sometime, but Emma says Ian is just a friend. Dexter says that if he and Emma are still single at 40, they should marry. Emma says she got the same offer from Ian, only for age 35, although personally she never plans to marry.
Dexter makes light of his relationship with Emma, suggesting that they should get married if they’re still single at 40 but also encouraging her to go out and date Ian, all while Emma is struggling with her own jealousy over the many people Dexter dates. Dexter’s proposal shows how he continues to be unable to imagine what it would really be like to be 40.
Themes
Emma says there are more important things in life than relationships. Dexter jokingly asks if she wants to focus on her restaurant career. He says maybe he could get her a job at his media company, unpaid at first, but Emma rejects the idea. She doesn’t like how careers in media get more money and glamor than more ordinary careers, like teaching. Dexter says maybe she should just be a teacher then. Emma says she doesn’t want his advice. Soon after, though, she apologizes for being disagreeable and boring. Dexter says he’s never found her boring.
By offering Emma a job that would begin unpaid, Dexter continues to show how he doesn’t understand her economic situation. Although Emma gets angry at Dexter’s comment that she should be a teacher, this is in fact something she tries later that ends up having a major impact on her life. Even as they struggle with self-reflection, Dexter and Emma can sometimes see truths about each other.
Themes
Emma says it’s getting late, and she should go home, to the flat where she still lives with Tilly, since it’s far. Dexter offers to let her sleep on his sofa, since his own place is nearby. Emma considers it but doesn’t want to complicate her life. She promises herself that she will finally “tidy up” her life and start over again.
Although Emma began the day feeling like she was in a rut, by the end of it, she has gotten the determination to “tidy up” her life. This shows how even as her relationship with Dexter is sometimes contentious, the two of them help each other to grow, in part because each offers an outside perspective on the other.
Themes
