Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Motherless Brooklyn, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mystery and the Futility of Answers
Difference and Otherness
Masculinity, Father Figures, and Mentorship
Language, Communication, and Understanding
Summary
Analysis
Lionel tells Julia’s story, which he learns in full during their meeting at the lighthouse. Julia refers to herself as “the girl” and to Frank and Gerard as “the brothers” as she tells Lionel her tale. She was born in Nantucket to “hippie” parents. Her father traveled often and left behind tapes about Eastern thought. Julia began to conflate her father and the voice on the tapes when her father stopped coming home from his trips. At 18, Julia went to art school in Boston but dropped out after two years. She briefly moved back home, then returned to Boston, where she worked as a waitress and attended Zen meetings. One year, she visited a Zen retreat in Maine and loved it so much that she decided to stay full-time and work as a waitress at a nearby seafood restaurant. There, she met two brothers.
As Julia tells Lionel her story, she detaches herself, Frank, and Gerard from reality by referring to the three of them as “the girl” and “the brothers.” This creates both a linguistic and emotional remove from the story, allowing Lionel to focus only on the facts. As Lionel gets the answers he’s wanted all along, however he perhaps finds them to be lackluster compared to what he expected: Frank’s great mysterious past is simply a story of common desires and betrayals.
Themes
The older brother, named Gerard, was flattering and charming. He frequently told stories both funny and frightening about being a mobster in Brooklyn. The girl became the older brother’s lover—but he stopped coming to the retreat. One day, however, he returned with his younger brother, Frank, in tow. The two men made a donation to the Zen center and moved into a pair of rooms at the retreat center. The older brother no longer wanted to see Julia. Julia began paying more attention to the younger brother, who had no interest in Zen. Soon, she became his lover. The younger brother told Julia about the pair of “aging Brooklyn mobsters”—Rockaforte and Matricardi—who pushed him and his brother out of Brooklyn after the brothers began stealing a percentage of the illegal goods the mobsters trafficked.
As Julia recalls her own deep interest in the brothers’ dangerous lives, she admits to being pulled into a web beyond her own understanding. Though Julia knew that both Gerard and Frank were trouble, she found herself drawn to them, nonetheless. Julia’s interest in the archetypes of mobsters mirrors Minna (and Lionel’s) interest in the archetypes of detectives.
Themes
Gerard grew distant as Frank became more invested in Julia. Frank shared with her about his dreams of starting a detective agency. Together, Julia and the younger brother began referring to the older brother as “Rama-lama-ding-dong.” When the younger brother got word that his mother was in the hospital, he asked Julia to return to Brooklyn with him, and Julia agreed to do so. On the way, they were married in Albany. By the time they got to Brooklyn, the brothers’ mother was dead. The younger brother was brought before The Clients to answer for his deeds. He begged for his life, claimed to be done with his older brother, and promised to work for the gangsters for life. The gangsters vowed to kill the older brother—but they let the younger brother live.
This passage fills in some of the blanks concerning Gerard and Frank’s tenuous existence in Brooklyn. Both of them were deeply in the pockets of The Clients—yet while Frank was allowed to keep his life in exchange for service to Matricardi and Rockaforte, Gerard remained a target (and, the story implies, still is one to this day). This explains Gerard’s desire to live in hiding and isolation at the Zendo—he was undercover and distanced from the mistakes of his past and the danger of his present.
Themes
Julia hated life in Brooklyn and found herself growing distant from the younger brother—Frank cheated on her relentlessly, and she retreated into solitude. One day, the younger brother announced that his older brother had returned to New York to run a Zendo in Yorkville—a Zendo subsidized by a powerful group of Japanese businessmen he’d men in Maine: the Fujisaki Corporation. The Fujisaki men were spiritual, but they were in disrepute and thus banned from monkhood in Japan. In America, however, the men could be both monks and crooks: they could make money and still be “men of wisdom and peace.”
This paragraph draws parallels between the Minnas and the Fujisaki Corporation. Frank Minna longed to be a detective, and Gerard longed to be a Zen master—yet neither brother wanted to renounce the wealth and the thrills associated with the underworld. The Fujisaki men are the same: they long for personal fulfillment, yet don’t want to abandon the wealth and power they can obtain through illegal dealings.
Themes
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Julia’s story concluded, Lionel returns to the present. He is standing with Julia at the lighthouse, his collar up like Minna would have his. He has Tony’s gun in his pocket. Lionel puts the rest of the story together: Frank got involved in a scam siphoning money from Fujisaki’s management company with the help of Ullman. Julia confirms this theory. Gerard, Lionel believes, pinned Frank and Ullman with the crimes against the Fujisaki to save himself—and, Lionel believes, was forced to order the killing of his own brother to save his own skin with the Fujisaki men. Then, Lionel continues, Gerard sought to eliminate Tony and Julia—his remaining links to Frank. Gerard, Lionel says, called Julia the night of Frank’s death—not the hospital. Julia says that Gerard arranged Yoshii’s to be a safehouse for her.
Lionel proves himself a careful and apt detective as he pieces together the rest of the story concerning Frank and Gerard’s confusing, fatal ties to the Fujisaki Corporation. In the underworld, where the thirst for more money and more power tears lives, families, and futures apart, Lionel now sees, there are no winners. Frank and Gerard destroyed their relationship by prioritizing fealty to shadowy men and corporations over one another. Now that Lionel has unraveled the mystery, he still doesn’t feel he understands the world any better—he is only more confused by the cruelties and betrayals of the people he thought he knew.
Themes
Lionel realizes that Tony wanted to take over Frank’s position as a player in both the Fujisaki’s fortune and The Clients’. Lionel asks if Julia and Tony were together, and Julia reveals that she’s slept with all the Minna Men except for Lionel. Lionel is disappointed and slightly jealous—but still feels he needs to rescue and protect Julia. They are, he feels, the same: “disappointed lovers of Frank Minna, abandoned children.” Lionel tells Julia about Kimmery—but Julia dismissively tells Lionel no woman will ever truly want him.
If Lionel had imagined for himself any kind of connection or bond of a sexual nature with Julia, he knows now that that fantasy is definitively a dead end. He does, however, feel that he and Julia still have a remaining connection of a different sort: they are the two people who have been most profoundly let down and hurt by Frank Minna, a “disappointed lover[]” and an “abandoned child[.]”
Themes
Julia reveals that she and Tony had heard Fujisaki was flying into Maine today—they planned to tell them about Gerard, but Lionel got in the way. Lionel tells Julia that it was the giant who got in the way—Gerard sent him up to Maine. Julia insists Gerard would never have wanted her dead. Julia says she’s never seen this giant man—she chalks this up to Lionel’s imagination. Julia pulls out a cigarette and lighter and asks Lionel to light it for her. Lionel takes them and lights the cigarette out of the wind—when he turns back around, Julia has a gun on him.
It is too painful for Julia to believe that Gerard would have sacrificed her out of fealty to the Fujisaki Corporation’s wealth and power. She would rather believe that Lionel is insane than even consider the idea that her former lover would betray her, even though the latter is obviously true.
Themes
Julia tells Lionel that Frank once told her Lionel was useful because he was “so crazy” that people assumed he was stupid. She says she’s made the same mistake—everywhere Lionel goes, someone who wants Gerard dead is dead, and she doesn’t want to be next. Julia believes that it was Lionel—not the giant—who killed Frank. Lionel begins performing tics. He begs Julia to put the gun away. When she refuses, he pulls out Tony’s own gun. The two hold their guns on one another for a long while. Lionel realizes the only thing he and Julia have in common, in fact, are the guns that they have trained on each other. Lionel assures Julia that he’s not the killer.
Julia doesn’t know who to trust or who to believe. Her years and years of involvement with the Minna Men have left her with an inability to tell friend from foe—and she would rather believe the worst in what she can see than put faith in something she can’t directly observe or understand.
Themes
Julia asks what she should do. Lionel suggests they both go home—they’re alive, and they’ve made it through the madness of the last few days. Julia continues to tease Lionel. Lionel throws his gun into the water. As Julia watches, confused, Lionel rushes her and pulls her gun away from her, then throws that into the ocean too. Lionel realizes he needs to throw five things into the ocean. He tosses Minna’s beeper, then the cell phone. He has nothing else to throw. He asks Julia for something from her purse. Instead, she walks away. Lionel takes off his right shoe, kisses it goodbye, and throws it. After saying goodbye to Julia, Lionel drives, shoeless, back to Brooklyn.
The ending to the novel’s big standoff is relatively anticlimactic. Lionel’s heroic movements trigger a compulsive tic, reminding him that no matter how deeply he dissolves into mystery and detective work, he will not be able to escape the fundamental truth of who he is or the patterns that make his mind unique. The reemergence of his kissing tic, which he worked so hard to suppress throughout his youth, hammers home that central fact.
Themes
