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8. Upstream!
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
History, Stories, and Truth
Hierarchy
Hope and Faith
Patterns, Repetition, and Connection
Summary
Analysis
“Parenthesis” is an essay on the nature of love and the “half chapter” referenced in the novel’s title. The modern-day narrator, who reveals himself to be Julian Barnes, the author of the book, describes sleeping beside the woman he loves and waking up to relish just how much he loves her. He believes poets are better able to express love than prose writers like him, and he muses on poems by Philip Larkin and W. H. Auden that concern the nature of love. He believes the phrase “I love you” in every language is linguistically beautiful and significant, and these words must not be cheapened by overuse.
The reveal that the modern-day narrator is Julian Barnes, an author of prose, adds self-deprecation to his assessment of poets versus prose writers. Barnes also articulates the difficulty of writing about love. The words “I love you” hold weight in and of themselves, so he suggests that anyone attempting to write about love must justify using more words than just that core phrase.
Active
Themes
Barnes argues that love does not make people happy, but it provides the opportunity for happiness if the two people in love are truly connected. It also energizes people and gives them a clearer sense of truth. Although love can’t be strictly necessary because animal species survive without it, it gives humans purpose and individuality. The assumption of people newly in love that their state of bliss is “normal” is part of the problem with the general perception of love. Another problem, Barnes says, is that people imagine hearts to be perfect and clean, while biological hearts are nothing of the kind.
Barnes’s argument for the importance of love both contests and affirms the distinction between humans and animals established in the book’s first chapter. Human hearts actually have nothing to do with love—hearts simply pump blood, the same as animals’ hearts do. However, the uniquely human ability to love does set people apart from animals.
Active
Themes
Barnes reflects on the link between love and truth, and notes that what we know as “history” is really an overlapping series of stories that historians interpret and brand as objective. He says that love and truth are “the prime connection” because both might seem unattainable in their purest form and both will make people unhappy, but striving for both love and truth is what makes humans human.
