Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Brilliant Friend, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Female Friendship
Masculine vs. Feminine Violence
Women’s Work
Poverty, Social Climbing, and Sacrifice
The Uses of Community
Love, Sex, and Strategy
Summary
Analysis
Lila’s interest in books, languages, and learning drops off. She never studies with Lenù anymore and insists that reading gives her a headache. Reading and studying are different for Lenù now, too; she sees reading not as an adventure, but rather the only thing she really knows how to do anymore. Still, she continues to excel in school. Maestro Gerace praises Lenù’s intelligence and introduces her as his star pupil to other teachers at the school.
The despondency and lethargy Lila began feeling after the night of the fireworks infects every aspect of her life—she no longer has any interested in books, languages, or learning, because she feels they will ultimately get her nowhere.
Themes
Professor Galiana, a woman who is rumored to be a Communist, stops Lenù in the hall one day to talk to her about one of her papers for Gerace’s class. Lenù is proud to have been noticed by Galiana, but as her reputation for cleverness begins to grow, she feels oddly empty—all her intelligence proves is how “fruitful” all of her study sessions with Lila have been.
Lenù continues attributing all her smarts and ideas to Lila alone. She has trouble accepting ownership of her own intellectual growth—she can’t see that while motivated by Lila, her ideas are indeed her own.
Themes
Lenù becomes distressed when her new reputation and good standing with the teachers doesn’t even get Nino Sarratore to notice her. She feels there is no “energy” in her learning anymore. Lenù urges Lila to start going back to reading and studying again, but Lila is uninterested in doing so. She reveals that Marcello Solara is continuing to pursue her. Lila worries that Marcello’s attention will soon lead to fights in the neighborhood—“I make people do the wrong thing,” she says sadly, citing Rino’s “mania” for money and power as an example.
Both Lenù and Lila are mired in parallel but connected periods of self-doubt and confusion. Lenù feels that without Lila’s enthusiasm, there is no point to her work—Lila, however, feels that whatever she does inspires the worst in people, unable to see the ways in which she’s positively impacted Lenù.
Themes
