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
Patrolman Mancuso goes to see his sergeant. Mancuso phoned Irene the day before to invite her to go bowling with him. Ignatius answered the phone and screamed at him to leave them alone and to investigate a club called the Night of Joy instead. Ignatius said the bar had real suspicious characters in it, not like him and his mother. Mancuso tells the sergeant that they should visit the Night of Joy, but the sergeant dismisses him and wonders where he got his information. Dejected, Patrolman Mancuso leaves.
Although Ignatius wants his own freedom to be respected, he has strict, conservative rules about what should be tolerated within society. He views strip clubs like the Night of Joy as morally corrupt and feels that society should not allow them. Ironically, this suggests that (like most of the characters in the novel) Ignatius only seems to be in favor of freedom when society’s values suit his own preferences rather than the diverse interests of others.
Themes
When Patrolman Mancuso has gone, the sergeant turns to another officer and tells him to investigate the Night of Joy. The sergeant does not want Mancuso to know, however, or to get the credit for anything they discover there. The officer says that they have had a complaint from a woman who says that a man in a sombrero harassed her on a bus. The sergeant knows that this man is Mancuso and jokes that maybe they ought to arrest him.
Patrolman Mancuso is a weak-willed character and cannot stand up to his sergeant, who humiliates him at work. This suggests that people in positions of authority, like the sergeant, often abuse their power if they can get away with it and hypocritically apply different rules for themselves than for others. Mancuso cannot possibly blend in with the ridiculous disguises that the sergeant makes him wear–he is set up to fail.
Themes
