Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Goodbye, Columbus, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Relationships, Competition, and Power
Assimilation and Wealth
Self-Delusion and Fantasy vs. Self-Examination and Reality
Nostalgia vs. Progress
Summary
Analysis
When Neil arrives at the Patimkins’ house, Julie shouts excitedly that Ron is getting married on Labor Day. Brenda explains to Neil that her parents have to arrange everything in a day or two, and now Ron is joining the business instead of becoming a gym teacher. At dinner, Ron talks about the fact that he is going to have a boy, and when his son is six months old, Ron will sit him down with a basketball, football, and baseball, and whichever one he reaches for they’ll concentrate on. Hearing this, Julie starts to sing that she’s going to be an aunt.
While Ron’s wedding is an exciting development in his life, the consequences and responsibility that come with it provide the foundation for his later nostalgia. Having to give up a job that would keep him involved in sports is disappointing to him, and it foreshadows his later obsession with reliving those glory days. However, Roth also illustrates that Ron is still optimistic about the future in dreaming of his future son and remaining connected to sports through him.
Themes
Neil goes up to the guest bedroom to unpack. There, he suggests to Brenda that he can spend the night in her room and sneak back in the morning. Though Brenda worries he might get caught, she agrees. Brenda says that she thinks Mrs. Patimkin is nervous about Neil’s being there. Neil wonders whether he should really stay a week, but Brenda assures him that when Harriet arrives no one will notice him anymore.
This is another smaller example of Neil taking the upper hand in their sexual relationship, dictating when he wants to see Brenda despite the potential risks involved in doing so.
Themes
Ron greets Neil as he unpacks, and Neil congratulates him on his impending wedding. Ron tells Neil that he’s welcome to borrow his phonograph to listen to music. Downstairs, Neil can hear Mrs. Patimkin and Brenda arguing about having too much company. Brenda says it’s not extra work for Mrs. Patimkin, because they have Carlota. Mrs. Patimkin responds that Brenda wouldn’t know about extra work because she’s lazy. Brenda starts to cry and runs out of the room, cursing.
Mrs. Patimkin’s view of their wealth again appears different from the rest of the family. While Mr. Patimkin is proud of the progress that he has made, Mrs. Patimkin appears to worry about the privileges to which her children (particularly Brenda) feel entitled and the fact that they do not work as hard as she once did.
Themes
When Brenda bursts into the guest room, Neil asks if he should go. Brenda assures him that Mrs. Patimkin wasn’t really upset about him. Brenda then opens another door in the room, which leads to a storeroom with all their old furniture from Newark in it, as well as $300 that Mr. Patimkin put aside for Brenda. Neil is dismayed by all the dust, wondering why the furniture is in there. Brenda checks the sofa where the money is hidden, but she can’t find it. She wonders if her dad took it back. Neil asks her why she wanted it; she says that she would have ripped it up and put it in Mrs. Patimkin’s purse. She tells Neil she wants to make love with him on the old sofa, and he obeys her.
The room with the furniture and money illustrates how the Patimkins’ wealth enables them to afford nice, new furniture in place of older furniture that hints at their poorer Jewish roots in Newark. Their wealth also enables them to have an extra space to store away this old furniture, which gestures to the excess of the American dream. Additionally, Brenda again tips the shifting power dynamics in her favor by demanding that Neil make love to her in a dusty storage room, putting her own desire above his feelings about being in the storeroom.
Themes
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The next day, Brenda and Neil eat breakfast alone together. Brenda says she wants to run on the track. Neil is hesitant, but Brenda insists and they head to the high school’s track. Brenda notes when they arrive that they look alike. They are dressed similarly, and Neil gets the feeling that what she means is that he is beginning to look the way she wants him to—“like herself.”
This marks a point in Neil’s assimilation into the Patimkin family—the point at which Brenda is noticing how much he fits in with her and her family. This means dressing similarly to Brenda, but the greater significance lies in the fact that he is dressing like someone who would go to a country club or play more affluent sports like tennis.
Themes
Neil and Brenda race along the track as Brenda dares him to see who is faster. But when they approach the half mile, Brenda swerves onto the grass to sit. She calls after him to join her, but he pretends he doesn’t hear her and does one more lap. She’s impressed and suggests that they do this every day: he can run and she’ll time him. Neil agrees.
Brenda sets up another competition, but in this one, Neil gains the upper hand. In contrast to the game in the pool, here he pretends to be indifferent towards her, trying to avoid her ability to simply command him to stop what he’s doing and sit with her. Yet, because Brenda immediately sets up another game for them, Neil’s attempt proves futile once more.
Themes
The next day, Brenda and Neil return to the track. Brenda times him with a stopwatch as he runs half a mile, and Neil feels like he’s a racehorse in a movie. When he’s finished Brenda is waiting for him, and she tells him that she loves him for the first time. Neil runs every morning, and by the end of the week he is running a 7:02 mile.
Neil’s feeling that he is like a racehorse reinforces his sense that Brenda has power over him in these games and that she treats him as less than equal. Not only does it imply that Brenda is his owner and that she can make him do what she wants, but also that he is working hard for the sake of pleasing her, just as a racehorse does for its owner.
Themes
At night, Neil and Brenda wait for Ron to sleep before Neil sneaks into Brenda’s room. Each night, Ron comes in after basketball, calls Harriet, and listens to music—particularly the Columbus record over and over. Neil hears this record faintly from his room, and can only make out the words “Goodbye, Columbus” repeated again and again. Then, when Ron’s light goes off and he goes to sleep, Neil slips into Brenda’s room.
This passage foreshadows the importance of the Columbus record to Ron. Because the title of the novel comes from the song’s lyrics, readers immediately recognize that it will be significant. Here, Roth simply emphasizes that Ron listens to it repeatedly, and it carries the solemnity and bittersweetness of saying goodbye to something.
Themes
One morning, before sneaking out of Brenda’s room and back to his own, Neil wakes up from an unsettling dream. He was on a ship with the boy from the library, anchored in the harbor of an island in the Pacific. When they moved out of the harbor, women threw leis at them and said “goodbye, Columbus.” They didn’t want to leave, and the boy shouted at Neil that it was his fault and Neil shouted at him for not having a library card. Waking from this, Neil doesn’t want to leave Brenda’s side, and he almost runs into Ron as he starts his day.
Neil’s dream is thematically rich, and it suggests that he feels that he is losing his fantasy—the relationship that he has with Brenda. It also foreshadows the nostalgia that he will find in his relationship when he looks back on it. “Goodbye, Columbus” represents having to move on from something he loved—particularly the ambivalence of looking back on it fondly but knowing that he will not be able to recapture it, an idea that will recur at the end of the book.
Themes
