Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Confederacy of Dunces, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Medievalism, Modernity, and Fate
The Legacy of Slavery
Sexuality, Attraction, and Repulsion
Freedom
Appearance, Identity, and Disguise
Hypocrisy and Self-Interest
Summary
Analysis
In his house, George sticks the article about Ignatius and the Night of Joy into his scrapbook. He thinks that Patrolman Mancuso must be an amazing cop to have solved the case all by himself. George even wonders if it might be best for him to get out of town for a while. George’s mother watches him hopefully and wonders if the scrapbook is a sign that he might try harder at school from now on. The doorbell rings and George’s mother answers. It is a policeman and they are looking for George. George realizes he is trapped—there is no back door through which to escape.
The consequences of George’s criminal behavior finally catch up with him. The ending of the novel, in which all the character’s conclusions are neatly tied up, suggests that there is something to Ignatius’s belief in the medieval idea of the wheel of fortune, which he believes is controlled by the goddess Fortuna and decides if people have either good or bad luck. Although it is not luck that has brought the police to George, but his own involvement with Lana, the fateful events which led to George’s connection with Patrolman Mancuso and the Night of Joy could not have been predicted when they were set in motion—there is something undeniably fateful and mysterious about the way the novel plays out.
Themes
