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Book 1, Chapter 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Son, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Pain and Maternal Love
Travel, Fitting In, and Values
Emotion, Individuality, and the Human Experience
Family and Coming of Age
Community and Sacrifice
Summary
Analysis
As Dmitri, the Hatchery supervisor, tells Claire she’ll get a bicycle, Claire thinks back on her walk over from the Birthing Unit. Passing the Dwelling area, she noticed the house where she grew up. A new couple lives there now, possibly waiting to be assigned a child. Claire looked away from the Nurturing Center, where the Products live after birth, and wondered if her boy was there yet. Passing the hall of Law and Justice, she wondered if her older brother, Peter, would even recognize her now. She passed the House of Elders and the river, which has always frightened and fascinated her. Then, she reached the Hatchery. She isn’t sure how long she’ll stay here. People usually move into houses when they’re assigned spouses, but Birthmothers don’t get spouses. But is her situation different?
Claire feels totally unmoored, and her inner monologue drives home how unusual her situation is. In a society where it seems like there’s a protocol for everything, she has no idea what the process is for her situation. This passage also points to how different Claire is and, perhaps, how different she’s always been. Her fascination with the river, a symbol for escape and the uncontrollable natural world, suggests that she’s perhaps naturally drawn to the unknown in a way that seems unusual for most people here.
Themes
In her bedroom that night, Claire muses that she didn’t get to say goodbye to the other Vessels. They’ll probably forget her quickly, and Claire knows she’ll become friends soon with the young workers here. The work won’t be difficult. Earlier, Claire got to tour the labs and see lab attendants take eggs from female fish and milt from male fish, and then mix the two. Nearby, another worker showed Claire trays of fertilized eggs and pointed out the visible eyes. She pulled out a dead egg and explained, in a matter-of-fact tone, that it died because the insemination probably went wrong and that they must remove the dead ones so they don’t “contaminate” the rest. Claire wonders if her insemination went wrong, but she reminds herself that Thirty-six is okay.
Again, Claire’s musings about her Vessel friends and the friends she’ll make here point to the weak interpersonal connections that people form here. Claire isn’t someone who will be remembered forever as a close friend: she’s just another nameless, faceless Vessel who left. The fish, particularly their embryos, emerge as a symbol for this community’s detachment. It’s no big deal for the worker to throw out dead embryos to protect the rest—and it’s certainly not an emotional process. In Claire, it causes her to dwell more on her “failure” as a Vessel, which is only a “failure” because of the way her community conceives of pregnancy and birth.
Themes
Over dinner, Claire is reminded that non-Birthmothers have an hour every day to do as they like. When she has the time, she wants to go find an old acquaintance, Sophia, who was assigned to be a Nurturer. This means that Sophia works at the Nurturing Center and is maybe caring for Claire’s baby. But as days pass, Claire can’t find time to get away without attracting attention. One day, as Claire shares a picnic lunch with Rolf, Eric, and Edith, a supply boat comes down the river. The Hatchery attendants discuss Spouse Assignments, which are announced at the Ceremony—an event Claire hasn’t attended in two years now, as Birthmothers don’t leave their quarters. Nobody, save the Birthmothers and Vessels themselves, know what pregnancy and birth are.
This passage highlights how narrow and circumscribed life in the community is. People are assigned jobs and spouses, and Birthmothers are essentially held hostage. The only choice (some) people have, if one can even call it that, is how to fill one hour each evening—a concession that feels almost meaningless, given everything else that people don’t get to choose. Additionally, noting that nobody but the girls having babies know where babies come from points to how this community stifles any critical thinking. These are Hatchery employees who deal with fish reproduction every day, and yet it seems not to occur to them to wonder how humans reproduce.
Themes
As the Hatchery workers clean up their picnic, two boys nearby say they’d like to work on a boat and get to see things. Edith sniffs that it’s likely against the rules to wonder about anything, let alone what else is out there to see. Eric heads off on an errand as Claire accompanies Edith and Rolf back to the Hatchery. Claire is relieved that it’s impossible to tell if someone is wondering something—she spends lots of time wondering.
That wondering is against the rules might seem laughable to readers, but in the context of this very controlling community, it makes sense. Forbidding people from wondering what else the world contains keeps people focused on the community, not on leaving. Claire’s wondering is framed as extremely unusual.
Themes
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