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Book 1, Chapter 5
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
Claire cannot identify the strange feeling of wanting to be with her son. And she’s never been around an infant before, as families only get two children and she was her parents’ second child. She asks her coworkers one night if they remember getting their siblings, and if their parents liked newchildren. Dmitri, who’s studied a lot of science, explains that infants in every mammalian species are born to look cute so that their parents want to care for them, though their society doesn’t have mammals anymore. Dmitri notes that they used to have pets here, which kept lonely people company. But nobody here is lonely anymore. Claire realizes, suddenly, that she’s lonely. She asks her coworkers if they, or their mothers, wanted to hold and rock their newchildren all the time. Rolf and Edith say their mothers worked and were happy to take their children to the Center.
Claire knows she’s different, and this is wildly uncomfortable for her. In addition to struggling with her desire to be with her son and hold him, she also experiences feelings no one else does, like loneliness and curiosity. When Dmitri says nobody’s lonely here now, it reveals that people aren’t supposed to be lonely (obviously, as Claire is lonely, they haven’t totally eradicated the feeling). And note how Dmitri talks about mammals and humans: he acknowledges on the one hand that humans are mammals, but then notes that mammals don’t exist here anymore. This is an instance of cognitive dissonance, where Dmitri is able to both acknowledge that humans are mammals and ignore the uncomfortable things that this might imply (such as the notion that humans, as mammals, are perhaps supposed to love and care for their babies).
Themes
Claire knows she needs to stop thinking about Thirty-six, but she can’t. As she looks at salmon eggs under her microscope, she thinks of her son. Eventually, she starts to dream of him. In one, she wears the leather mask and someone gives her the newchild—and then they take him away. In another, she keeps him hidden in a drawer. Secrecy is against the rules in Claire’s society, and she feels guilty for having these dreams. But fortunately, while children are required to share their dreams with their family units every morning, single working adults like Claire don’t have to. Claire realizes that until recently, she’s only ever felt content. Everyone in her community feels that way. Nobody wants anything here—but Claire has wanted her child since he was born. Finally, she finds time to go back to visit the Nurturing Center.
The salmon eggs remind Claire of Thirty-six both because she realizes they came about the same way (artificial insemination undertaken for the good of the community) and because it is, perhaps, difficult to ignore the detached way she’s supposed to look at both the eggs and her baby—a detached attitude she genuinely cannot feel. Her dreams speak to her fears and her discontent in her community, as well as her hope that things could be different. And once again, Claire realizes she’s different for having feelings at all, highlighting how emotionless her community is in general.
Themes
