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
Elena stresses the importance of the contest between Oliviero and Ferraro’s classes. Though she and Lila were not yet good friends, she was able to intuit the sense of deference and respect Lila felt compelled to show Alfonso, the son of Don Achille—a sense that both girls have inherited from their parents.
This passage confirms the fact that Lenù and Lila are compelled to move through the world in a certain way because of who their parents are—and who the parents of their classmates are. This makes Lila’s defiance and insistence upon making her intelligence known all the more remarkable.
Themes
Lenù feels terrible that even her beloved Nino Sarratore must show the same deference to Alfonso. Flashing back to the moment of the contest, Lenù recoils watching the beautiful, long-lashed Nino “collapse” in the face of the contest with Alfonso. She also has an important realization during the competition: Lila is beautiful, and especially so during moments of intensity. Lenù feels she is truly second-best in everything.
Lenù begins feeling jealous of Lila in ways. As she develops feelings for Nino, she begins to doubt her own beauty and seems to believe that Nino would prefer Lila. This represents an added layer of competitiveness that will emerge out of Lila and Lenù’s friendship as the years go by.
Themes
The day after the contest, the defeated and embarrassed Alfonso’s older brother Stefano, who is 14 and an apprentice at the grocery store owned by Don Achille, shows up at school to berate and threaten Lila. When Lila shouts back at him, Stefano pushes her up against a wall and tries to grab her tongue, threatening to prick it with a pin. The next morning, Lila’s brother Rino, having heard of Stefano’s cruelty, picks a fight with Stefano and the two boys beat each other. Donna Maria, Don Achille’s wife, comes to the Cerullos’ door to shout at Nunzia. On Sunday, after mass, Fernando Cerullo apologizes to Don Achille timidly—Don Achille walks past Fernando as if he has not heard his words.
This passage shows how the entanglements and fights that Lila, Lenù, and their friends get into have reverberations in their parents’ world, as well. The children of the men who run the neighborhood are determined to maintain their fathers’ dominance—and the parents of those who resist the children of the loan sharks and Camorrists who must pay the price.
Themes
After Lila and Lenù’s rock fight with Enzo, the older Elena recalls, Rino came to school to beat up the younger boy Enzo. Enzo, however, didn’t mention Rino’s beating to anyone. For a brief time, Elena recalls, the “feuds” came to a stop because of Enzo.
This passage shows that there are small ways in which the endless cycles of retributive violence in the neighborhood can be broken or at least stalled—the question is whether the men of the neighborhood, young and old, can shoulder the humility needed to do so.
Themes
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