Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Self-Consciousness and Meta-Narration
Coming of Age, Parenthood, and Responsibility
Death, Humor, and the Worst-Case Scenario
Identity
Guilt and Poetic License
Summary
Analysis
Eggers begins by saying that it isn’t necessary to read the book’s preface, which “exists mostly for the author.” He also suggests that the acknowledgements section isn’t important to the plot of the book and that it, too, can be skipped, along with the table of contents and even a stretch of pages in the middle of the text. “Matter of fact,” he writes, “the first three or four chapters are all some of you might want to bother with.” After that, he admits, the book is somewhat “uneven.”
Right away, Eggers makes his narrative self-consciousness overwhelmingly apparent. Using a mixture of self-deprecating humor and sarcasm, he shows readers that, although this memoir may contain tragic material, it isn’t necessary to approach the text with an overinflated sense of seriousness.
Themes
