My Friends Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Twenty-five years later, in the present, C. Jat is the homeless man, standing outside the church near the auction of his painting. He is dying but believes one can’t become too obsessed with death, or else one will live life in a cowardly way.

C. Jat has clearly been thinking about death for a long time, given the skulls that became his signature. His acceptance of his own death suggests that he has matured and become more confident in his life choices than he was as a teenager.

Active Themes

C. Jat compliments Louisa on her paintings, and she is shocked because she has just realized his identity. She tries to tell him how much The One of the Sea means to her, but suddenly, the shout of a security guard interrupts them. C. Jat wishes Louisa well as she takes off running. She disappears around a corner, and C. Jat thinks back to that pier where he spent much of the summer when he turned 15.

Although C. Jat became famous for painting a group of teenagers, he seems to have lost the youthful part of himself. Seeing Louisa reminds C. Jat of how he and his friends used to be. In turn, Louisa’s ability to recognize C. Jat despite his humble appearance shows how he helps her understand things as well.

Active Themes

C. Jat thinks back on his life and how he found tremendous success and money but how it only brought him new anxieties and pressure. He never knew how to satisfy people who asked him where he got his inspiration—for him, inspiration comes from grief and from the fact that the most important person in his life died. But he usually just answered “I don’t know.”

Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostr

Like Louisa, C. Jat believes that there is more to life than money and material success. The fact that C. Jat’s creativity comes from grief hints at why the skulls are such an important symbol to him. His inability to describe his own creative process, meanwhile, shows how creativity can be mysterious and difficult to quantify.

Active Themes

A police officer grabs C. Jat, who is weak and loses balance, spraying the officer with pink spray paint. The officer thinks he’s just a vagrant who graffitied the wall, so he tackles him down, and C. Jat hits his head. As police officers are taking away the unconscious C. Jat, a well-dressed man recognizes C. Jat and scolds the officers. C. Jat hears the voice and recognizes the man as Ted. He tells Ted not to let the officers catch Louisa.

Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrup

C. Jat gets treated like an intruder outside of an art auction where his own work is selling for a tremendous sum of money. This passage once again shows how context affects the way people react to art, revealing how people who don’t care about art. Whereas people inside the auction took the graffiti in the bathroom seriously and saw it as “real” art just because of the setting, the police officers outside see graffiti as a nuisance, even when it’s the work of a famous artist.

Unlock Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

Active Themes

My Friends: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis