Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
War: Horror, Beauty, and Humanity
Power, Reality, and Absurdity
History and Storytelling
Politics and Friendship
Family, Opportunity, and Gender Dynamics
Summary
Analysis
The narrator says that there's little to report of the German occupation. It was grim; the Germans were barely human. They stole, raped, and let people starve. One soldier killed Psipsina, and others burned Drosoula with cigarettes. That year, neither the holy snakes nor the sacred lily appeared at all. When the Germans were ordered to withdraw in 1944, they destroyed everything before they left. Weber, however, quietly left his gramophone, his collection of Marlene Dietrich records, and an envelope outside Pelagia's door. The envelope contained a photo of Corelli and Weber at the beach, obviously drunk, with a prostitute in the background. Weber wrote on the back that he promised to always remember Pelagia.
The choice to follow through on his promise and leave the gramophone for Pelagia shows that Weber regrets what he did and does value his friendships with La Scala and with Pelagia. Because the idyll depicted in the photo is so different from the current horror, however, it reinforces the novel's assertion that beauty and wonder during times of war will always be compromised when the war finally asserts itself.
Themes
