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 the Night of Joy, Jones sweeps the floor and Lana reprimands him for wearing his sunglasses indoors. Jones gives Lana a sulky reply and says that he won’t watch where he’s going when he’s only paid $20 a week—not even minimum wage. Lana says that she has an errand for Jones to run, but Jones refuses. Lana says that she will get Darlene to do it, but Jones tells her that this is unfair to Darlene because she works for almost nothing too. Lana says that Jones should tell the police if he doesn’t like it, and Jones goes back to noisily sweeping the floor.
Like Ignatius, Jones refuses to compromise aspects of his personality, like his sunglasses, which are key to his identity. However, while Ignatius’s attitude seems unreasonable (employers are willing to pay him well in exchange a minor sacrifice), Jones’s attitude protects him from being psychologically affected by the discrimination he experiences. Although Lana takes advantage of him, his sunglasses give him a modicum amount of power which Lana cannot remove—he is able to annoy her in this small yet satisfying way as a means of revenge.
Themes
A stylish young boy enters the bar, and Lana asks him if the “orphans” like their package. The boy, George, gives Lana some money. George says the orphans especially liked the one with the glasses and the desk and that the next one should involve a piece of chalk. Lana seems interested and gives George a packet to take with him. Jones watches and makes a sarcastic comment; he does not believe the packages are for orphans at all.
It seems unlikely that someone as uncharitable as Lana would be engaged in charitable work with “orphans.” Either she is a bigger hypocrite than Jones thought and uses profits she gets from crime and exploitation of her employees to give to charity, or she uses the guise of packages for the “orphans” to transport something illegal.
Themes
Lana begins to count the money. She drops a coin on the floor and demands that Jones help her find it. When she does find the coin, she makes a delighted sound and Jones makes another sarcastic comment. Lana reprimands him again, but Jones says that she cannot do anything to him; she is not “Scarlett O’Horror.”
Lana is obsessed with money and takes advantage of her staff to increase her profits. Jones explicitly links Lana to a slave owner because of the way she exploits him at work. Scarlett O’Hara is the main character from the Southern novel, Gone with the Wind, about a plantation owner. Jones suggests that Lana is no different from a literal slave owner because if he tries to leave his job, Lana threatens to have him arrested for vagrancy. In this sense, Jones is not free to leave and is, in a sense, enslaved by Lana.
Themes
