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 and Lenù sit for their final elementary school exit exams. Lenù gets straight 10s—Lila, however, gets only nines and eights. After this, Lila distances herself from Lenù and begins hanging out with Carmela Peluso. Lenù, however, will not let herself be abandoned—she joins the girls and together they form a kind of trio, even though Lenù often feels Lila purposefully trying to leave her out of jokes and games. Lenù notices that Lila seems to be going through her days in a kind of “daze”—she continues talking about attending school next year, even though both Lenù and Carmela know she did not sit for the admissions test, as Lenù did recently. Lila insists that she is going, “test or no test.”
Lila copes with her jealousy and resentment of Lenù by distancing herself form her, leading Lenù to feel miserable and lonely. At the same time, however, Lenù can sense the severe sadness and distress that Lila is feeling—emotions that are leading her to adopt a stance of denial to protect herself from her own despair and her classmates’ judgment.
Themes
As the weeks go by, Lila seems back to her old self—but Lenù can sense that she is still suffering under the surface. Lenù notices that Lila has started picking fights with her family: on days when they meet up in the courtyard, Lenù can hear Lila shouting horrible vulgarities at her parents. One afternoon, when Lila doesn’t show up to play, Lenù goes to her window and starts shouting for her—and soon, she hears Fernando’s agitated voice and the crash of a broken object. Lenù realizes that Fernando and Lila are having a shouting match. A few seconds later, Lila flies through the air—Fernando has thrown her out of the window. Lenù rushes over to Lila, who insists she isn’t hurt in spite of her visibly broken arm.
In the depths of her despair, Lila begins lashing out at her father—the person who has told her she cannot pursue an education—in an attempt to provoke from him a physical manifestation of the emotional violence he’s done to her by denying her the chance to advance in school. Though Lila’s brawls with Fernando result in her bodily (and no doubt emotional) harm, she bears her wounds with pride and defiance.
Themes
