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
In a poetic and very brief interlude, Lionel describes how only in dreams does he shed his tics—or, perhaps, do his tics shed him—allowing him to leave himself behind.
Lionel is constantly seeking relief from his tics through food, music, sex, and sleep. He longs to be rid of his Tourettic self due to a combination societal pressure and personal exhaustion. He has been taught to resent rather than embrace his difference and to feel exhausted rather than enlivened by the way his own mind works.
Themes
