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
Lenù becomes obsessed with making connections between her life and Lila’s, pointing out the “convergences and divergences” in their paths. She notes that the better off she was in Ischia, the worse off Lila was; the happier Lila has become in the last month, the worse off Lenù has been. Lenù feels that even the physical realm is affected by this inverse proportion: though she felt tan and beautiful on Ischia, she now feels plain and dull; Lila, however, has become even more beautiful.
This passage is significant because it shows how Lenù truly thinks, at this point in her life, about the connection between her and Lila. Though their lives are barely recognizable to each other, Lenù remains devoted to the belief that their fates are still somehow intertwined in spite of it all.
Themes
Things worsen when Lenù begins to have trouble seeing the board in school and finds herself needing glasses. Lenù hates the glasses—yet when she accidentally breaks them at school she begins to cry, knowing her parents will not be able to pay to replace them. When she tells Lila what has happened, Lila takes the glasses. A few days later, Lila brings them back—Stefano took them to the city to have them fixed and he paid for everything. Lenù says she’ll never be able to pay Lila back. Lila says there’s no need to—now, she does whatever she likes with money.
This passage illustrates how different Lila and Lenù’s lives are now—their paths have definitively diverged. Lenù must still contend with the everyday struggles of poverty and uncertainty, while Lila’s life has been smoothed over by wealth and comfort.
Themes
