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Part One
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Good Morning, Midnight, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Sadness and Vulnerability
Identity and Belonging
Memory, Loss, and Change
Money and Manipulation
Summary
Analysis
When the following afternoon rolls around, Sasha finds herself preparing to meet Delmar. Together, they go to visit a painter named Serge, but on their way, Sasha has a flashback to a period she spent living in a hotel in Paris and sleeping for the vast majority of the time. She hardly ate anything during this time, going for three weeks without having anything more than a coffee and a croissant in the mornings. She fantasized about killing herself, but she kept putting it off—she had already paid for her room through the month, so she figured she might as well stick around.
Again, Sasha loses herself in memories of her tumultuous past. Her flashback helps readers make sense of her deep sense of sadness; in fact, her current unhappiness seems relatively insignificant compared to the period she rehashes in this moment. Readers learn that she went through a suicidal period during which she barely ate anything.
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When Sasha wasn’t sleeping, she would usually walk around Paris. One day, a man came up to her and asked if she’d like to have a drink. While they sipped absinthe, he read her a letter he’d received from a lover. The letter was full of flattering compliments, but it ended with a request for the man to send money so the lover could buy new shoes. The man suspected that the woman just needed to give money, but he also hated the idea of her having to make do with insufficient shoes. Sasha helped him analyze the letter, and as they did this, they kept drinking. Finally, he invited her to the place he was staying.
The man in this story is unsure whether or not his lover’s interest in him is genuine or if she just wants some money. His suspicion resembles the dilemma Sasha faced in her interactions with René, since she couldn’t determine if René’s intention was to con her or to connect with her. In this way, the novel is full of strange, ambiguous relationships in which each partner’s motivations remain unclear.
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As soon as they got outside, Sasha realized how drunk she was. She fell over, and her new companion jokingly suggested that she’d been dancing too much. “Ah,” he said, “what will happen to this after-war generation?” Everyone in Sasha’s generation, he implied, was only interested in having fun. But Sasha told him the real reason she was so drunk: she hadn’t eaten in three weeks. Perturbed, the man jumped into a taxi, slammed the door, and sped away.
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Back in the present, Sasha and Delmar enter Serge’s apartment. Serge puts on some music and dances with an African-style mask while Sasha watches. They discuss art and the different Parisian clubs that they like, and then Sasha unexpectedly breaks into tears. She apologizes, saying she doesn’t know what’s wrong with her, but Serge encourages her to cry—why hold back? She is, after all, among friends. She asks for a drink, so he gives her the last splash of liquor in his apartment. Swallowing it down, she becomes aggravated by the idea that she has let Serge and Delmar see her cry, so she barks at Serge, telling him to go out and get her some brandy. Instead of playing into her animosity, though, he ignores her and makes some tea.
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After some pleasant conversation, Serge announces that he has to meet a friend. He says that Delmar and Sasha should stay, since he’ll only be gone an hour. And then, on his way out, he says something to Delmar in Russian. As soon as he’s gone, Delmar comes over to Sasha and kisses her, saying that he was heartbroken to see her cry. Deflecting his romantic attention, she gives him a friendly kiss and then asks what Serge said before leaving. She learns that he told Delmar that Sasha didn’t have to buy a painting if she didn’t want to. But Sasha insists that she wants one, so Delmar sets them up so she can look at them. Taking in their vivid colors, she experiences a sort of happiness that feels like a “miracle.”
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When Serge returns, Sasha says she wants to buy one of the paintings. As they talk about the price, she notices that his tone is no longer open and warm—instead, he speaks in a matter-of-fact, businesslike voice. She informs him that she doesn’t have the money on her, and he immediately turns to Delmar and says, “What did I tell you?” But then he agrees to let her have the painting, saying that she can send him the money when she gets back to London, even though she assures him that she just needs to go home and get it. They eventually arrange to meet later that day, though he also says that she doesn’t really need to pay him; she just needs to help him find “some other idiots” to buy his work.
That evening, Sasha waits for Serge, but he never shows up. Instead, Delmar arrives and apologizes on behalf of his friend. He went to Serge’s apartment, but Serge was nowhere to be found. Delmar thinks Serge is crazy, so he doesn’t understand why Sasha liked him so much—in fact, he's disappointed to hear that Sasha liked the painter. He then asks if he can see Sasha again, but Sasha says she’s very busy and that she’s leaving Paris the following week. Nonetheless, she agrees when Delmar asks if he can see her to the train station.
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Once Sasha returns to her hotel, she feels bad that Delmar has spent so much money buying her drinks. But then she realizes that Delmar might get a cut of the money she paid for the painting—or perhaps he’ll never give it to Serge at all.
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Sasha goes to a bar and feels as if the staff is watching and judging her. To seem cultured and respectable, she leaves the waiter a big tip and asks him for directions to the nearest movie theater, though she senses that this doesn’t impress him. He doesn’t care what she does, and yet she can’t help herself from constantly thinking about how other people perceive her.
Sasha is drunk by the time she arrives at the movie theater. Later, she makes her way to the nearest bar and has yet another drink. Then, back at the hotel, she receives a letter from Serge in which he apologizes for not meeting her the night before. He also says that Delmar gave him the money and that he’ll try to accompany Delmar to the train station to see her off, but Sasha doubts he’ll really be there. Sitting in the dark hotel, Sasha stares at the painting and feels as if her room brings back too many memories, reminding her of every other room she has ever stayed in.
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