Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Reckoning, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Guilt and Legacy
Morality, Survival, and Perspective
Sexuality and Shame
Body Image and Publicity
Indifference vs. Feeling
Summary
Analysis
From the present, Magda goes back to when she was 12 and winning a tennis match. Magda has a strong serve, but she can sense her opponent’s humiliation. Overcome with pity for the girl, Magda fumbles the next serve and loses the next three games. Peter decides that Magda’s weight is affecting her game and suggests that she starve herself. Before the war, Peter was plump; after escaping the POW camps, however, he was thin. In an effort to control her “womanliness,” Magda starts starving herself.
Peter claims that Magda’s weight is preventing her from performing well in sports and encourages her to starve herself. He cites the weight loss he experienced while at a POW camp to motivate Magda. Peter’s advice to his daughter is unhealthy and damaging to her self-image. It also shows how his unresolved trauma from the war continues to affect him, and how he passes that trauma down to his children.
Themes
After the war, Magda recalls, Peter—who could never sit still—became obsessed with tennis; he pored over instruction manuals and watched matches on TV; when she was barely big enough to hold it, he gifted Magda a tennis racket, took her to a local club, and threw a ball at her without warning. Defensively, Magda held up her racket, and accidentally hit a beautiful serve.
Peter started playing tennis right after the war, and he seems to treat the sport as an extension of his duties as a detective and assassin. Peter did not know how to live without exercising his skills of strategy and agility, or without taking opportunities to conquer an opponent. In this way, though Peter might regret his military actions, they nevertheless continue to define many aspects of his post-war life, including his hobbies and how he interacts with others.
Themes
After this, Magda became an avid tennis player; on weekends, she played at local clubs with friends. On holidays, she went away to country tournaments. Every year, Peter took Magda to the Australian tennis tournament in Kooyong. Here, there was the sense that tennis was the one area in which Australia could compete with Britain. Between matches, when Peter and Magda got ice cream, they ran into famous tennis players. Magda was later embarrassed when Margaret found photos of a female tennis pro on her camera.
Like her obsession with TV, Magda’s tennis obsession conveniently conceals her developing lesbian sexuality from her parents. While passing as a tennis enthusiast, Magda is able to photograph famous female tennis players to whom she is attracted. Margaret’s discomfort with the photos is one of the many instances which lead Magda to assume that her parents will not support her sexuality.
Themes
Peter did not include Margaret in his tennis obsession, so he and Magda drove to the matches alone in the family’s Triumph 2000, an impractical sportscar that Peter had fallen in love with. Years later, Chris would total a similar Triumph while driving drunk. Magda loved the trips to the tennis matches, but she also resented that Peter spent them complaining about Margaret.
In complaining to Magda about Margaret, Peter assumes that Magda is like a grown-up friend to whom he can vent. In failing to recognize a child’s sensitivity, Peter misses an opportunity to connect with his daughter. This demonstrates how Peter’s lack of emotional sensitivity hinders his relationships.
Themes
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Although Magda had a tennis coach, Peter gave her private lessons. Because of his seriousness, the tennis club appointed Peter to their selection committee. Mieczysław had been a scout for Olympic wrestling tournaments; his standards for perfection influenced Peter’s tennis standards. By contrast, becoming too good at a sport always made Magda feel like a Nazi.
Peter’s strict approach to sports, Magda can’t help but associate athleticism with inhumane militarism. In other words, perfection frightens Magda because it makes her feel inhuman and wicked. With this in mind, Magda will go on to be wary of too much fame and greatness.
Themes
Notably, Peter’s Olympic standards were genderless; he raised Magda to believe that she could play tennis as well as a man. Influenced by seeing the women in his family wield weapons, Peter felt that a woman’s potential was wasted on being feminine.
Although Peter’s genderless views seem liberating, his disdain of femininity suggests otherwise. His preference for the conventional masculine trait strength—something that would be valued during war—also indicates how his experiences during the war shape his present views, in this case regarding gender norms.
Themes
Peter liked tennis’ similarity to war: shots could be “killer,” and there was nowhere to hide on the court. When playing against Magda, Peter used deceptive strategies to beat her. Magda loved her father, but she hated him for this particular habit; she felt that he beat her to release his pent-up “killer energy.” The war taught Peter to outwit—but not to be merciful. Peter said that Magda didn’t have the “killer instinct” that it took to be one of the greats, but he expected her to train as though she did.
Regardless of Peter’s moral views on killing, he values the skills that make people killers. This valuation of “killer instincts” turns Magda against her father because she does not have the same values. In noting that Peter never learned to be merciful, Magda claims that there are other valuable “skills”—skills that have less to do with talent and more to do with emotional sensitivity.
Themes
When Magda is 12, a newspaper photographs her twice at a championship, once practicing tennis, and once watching a match on Peter’s lap. Although she looks more impressive in the photos than in reality, Magda takes them as a sign that she’ll be a champion one day. Then, Mandy Plunkett beats her; Magda again worries that she doesn’t have what it takes; her mind, having none of Peter’s mental toughness, is betraying her. Magda loses match after match while Peter paces the court, scowling with humiliation. The coach’s girlfriend tries to give Magda some helpful advice, but Magda doesn’t want to betray her father. Magda understands that Peter can’t help himself, so she forgives him.
Magda is torn between wanting to be like her father and wanting to get away from his way of doing things. On the one hand, Magda wants Peter’s “mental toughness.” On the other hand, she sees that Peter’s approach to sports does not help her succeed or feel good about herself. Magda’s loyalty to Peter prevents her, at times, from doing what would be good for herself. Ideally, Magda will find a way to be herself while also channeling Peter’s knowledge.
Themes
One Saturday at the club, Magda asks Peter for 20 cents to get a soda. Peter says that the last thing Magda needs is a soda. Magda storms off. Later, after Trevor Hanson, a “leering creep,” loses a match, he whacks Magda on the shoulder with a tossed tennis ball. Cursing, Magda runs to the court where Peter is playing and yells for him to tell Trevor off. Peter, chuckling, tells Magda to calm down. Screaming that Peter never sticks up for her, Magda runs and locks herself in the car. Later, Peter comes and pleads for Magda to open the door. Still furious, Magda refuses. Finally, when Peter dances a 20-cent coin over the window, Magda laughs and opens the door. The next day, Margaret drives Magda to Trevor’s house and forces Trevor to apologize; Magda is humiliated.
If Margaret and Peter represent two opposite ways of handling situations—Margaret to confront emotional affronts and Peter to disregard them—then Magda doesn’t appreciate either of their approaches. On the one hand, she is hurt that Peter doesn’t care when her feelings are hurt, whether by others or by him. On the other hand, Margaret’s fierce demand for an apology humiliates Magda. Torn between her parents opposite and extreme approaches to meeting her emotional needs, Magda wonders which approach she will come to adopt herself.
Themes
One year, Peter gives Magda a rifle and takes her rabbit hunting. In the pine forest, Peter points out a rabbit. Feeling no pity, Magda points her gun at the rabbit. Because the rifle is big for Magda’s hands, it jerks when she fires, and the rabbit runs away. Saying that the rabbit is injured, Peter leads Magda to where the rabbit lies dying, telling her to “finish it off.” Seeing the pained rabbit, Magda bursts into tears; her sense of self collapses. She can’t belief that she’s really Peter’s daughter. Losing patience, Peter takes the rifle and shoots the rabbit. Magda hides her face. On the way home, the Triumph’s muffler breaks. Peter never takes Magda hunting again, and he gets rid of the Triumph.
As with Magda’s aspirations to be a doctor, she is comfortable with hunting in theory but rejects it in practice, horribly affected when she actually encounters the wounded rabbit she shot. While Peter’s cold realism—“finish it off”—traumatizes Magda, she also looks up to him to the point where her sense of self is based on her success at emulating him and earning his respect. Because she continuously fails to live up to Peter’s expectations, Magda has a crisis of self.
Themes
