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 booth at the bus station bathroom, Patrolman Mancuso’s cold has grown even worse. He is desperate to escape the booth and knows he must make an arrest to do so. He has been reading the book Ignatius lent him, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. Mancuso finds it depressing because the man who wrote it is in prison and is about to be tortured and killed by the king. Mancuso thinks Boethius might have been a gambler because he writes a lot about odds and chance.
Patrolman Mancuso feels trapped in the bus station because he is not free to do his job on the streets. This suggests that freedom is subjective and that, while to some, the idea of work is limiting, to others work is a privilege. Mancuso misunderstands Boethius’s description of the wheel of chance, which was believed to be controlled by the goddess Fortuna in the medieval period, and instead interprets the book in a modern sense. However, Mancuso is not wrong in his assertion that many people in modernity, such as gamblers, still subscribe to ideas of fate and chance, which they view as a mystical force beyond their control.
Themes
While he is thinking, Patrolman Mancuso notices a young man enter the bathroom. It is George, who Patrolman Mancuso has noticed comes in everyday at about the same time. George writes something on his hand, and Patrolman Mancuso exits the booth and asks him what he is doing. George is startled and wonders what Patrolman Mancuso wants. He says he has done nothing wrong, but Patrolman Mancuso tells George that he is under arrest and under suspicion.
Although George is involved in criminal activity, Patrolman Mancuso has no evidence of this when he decides to investigate. This suggests that people in 1960s America were not as free as they perhaps imagined and could be investigated purely based on appearances.
Themes
George snatches the book from Patrolman Mancuso and hits him over the head with it. George escapes from the toilet and rushes out of the bus station, carrying the book and the package (which he’d planned to leave at the station) with him. He runs downtown and finally slows to a walk when he sees he has not been followed.
George is involved in criminal activity and reacts to Patrolman Mancuso’s interest violently in order to stop his crime from being discovered. This suggests that, in this instance, Mancuso is right to judge George on appearance. However, this is an exception to the rule in A Confederacy of Dunces, in which characters are often in disguise and does not justify the belief that people who appear suspicious or do not fit in should automatically be persecuted.
Themes
George mentally curses Lana Lee. It is her fault that he must carry the packages around all afternoon, now that he can no longer leave them at the bus station, because she won’t fire Jones. George doesn’t want to wander around the streets all afternoon, but he can’t go home because his mom is always there. He notices that he still has the book and thinks that he will give it to Lana for her collection.
Lana will not fire Jones because she knows she can pay him as little as she wants and that he cannot quit because it is illegal to be unemployed in New Orleans. Vagrancy laws are applied very harshly to black people due to the legacy of racism left behind by slavery, and Jones, who has been wrongly arrested before, could easily be imprisoned again. George comes across The Consolation of Philosophy by chance and just happens to find it useful. This suggests that much of human life is subject to fate, and supporting Ignatius’s belief in medieval concepts such as Fortuna’s wheel, which he believes controls human life.
Themes
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