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
At Peter’s funeral in 2006, a woman laments to Magda that all the “old warriors” are dying. Magda agrees that many people’s stories are erased from history. Peter was not religious, but he liked the aesthetics of Roman Catholicism, so the funeral is held at a Catholic church in Melbourne, Australia. An older generation of Poles arrive. A woman goes to Magda’s mother, Margaret, and kisses her. Magda’s friend Izabella kisses Magda but remains stoic: her father had often warned her how emotions got innocent people killed in war. Two hundred people attend the funeral, reflecting Peter’s social nature. Margaret is composed, but Magda can tell she is reeling from the loss of her husband: although he had many flaws, he had been loyal.
The guests at Peter’s funeral come from a generation that stands out from Magda’s generation. Their unique and often traumatizing experiences during World War II have conditioned Peter and his contemporaries to keep their emotions in check. The idea that showing emotion is dangerous during war was so ingrained in this generation that it not only became habit for Margaret and Izabella’s father long after the war ended, but they pass down the trait to their children, though the younger generation was never directly exposed to war.
Themes
Two years earlier, when Magda arrives on a visit to her parents, Margaret jumps out of her recliner and meets Magda in the hall, heading her off that Peter had been to see a specialist. When Magda can’t get details out of Margaret, she goes to Peter and asks if “it” has spread. Peter jokes evasively that he won’t be around for Christmas. Losing her temper, Magda asks Peter why he enjoys scaring the family with his impending death. Peter feigns innocence, claiming that he isn’t scared of dying. From the living room, Margaret says flatly that Peter is as scared as they all are. This is the last time that Magda sees her father at home. Two years later, Margaret calls Magda in London to say that Peter has taken a fall. Magda gets on a plane, praying that Peter will still be alive when she arrives.
Peter’s attitude reflects the trauma he experienced as a young man. His inability to resist joking about his coming demise from cancer suggests that he uses humor as a defense mechanism. Growing up during World War II, Peter perhaps resorted to humor and evasion to cope with the constant threat of death. Peter could not dispose of these defense mechanisms after the war because, due to cancer, death never stopped threatening him. Therefore, despite the comfortable domestic setting—the living room with the recliners—Peter still maintains habits he acquired to cope with the threat of war.
Themes
Before his death, Peter often said that he had escaped death countless times, whether from war or health. Now, he is in a coffin wearing an ill-fitting suit and shoes that Magda’s brother Chris lovingly shined.
As a terminal cancer patient, Peter is technically dying prematurely. However, because Peter survived a time when many died, his perspective is that his death is coming late.
Themes
Just before Peter’s death, Magda arrives at the hospital, greets her family, and kisses her father, whose cheek is hot from morphine. Peter can still hear, but he can’t see or speak; Magda is relieved she does not have to say goodbye while he is fully present. The family watches Peter’s body slowly give up life, and they struggle to cope with the death. Magda’s sister Barb sings “Amazing Grace,” and the rest join in.
Magda’s relief reveals that she still fears Peter’s true nature. If Peter were able to respond to Magda or look her in the eye, he could convey what he is really feeling about his coming death. Peter’s looming death makes Magda contemplate Peter’s relationship to death over the course of his life up to this point—both as a killer and as a survivor.
Themes
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Months before his death, Magda suggests that Peter see a priest. Peter scoffs; after the war, he made his own personal reconciliation with God. Once, in a letter to a former army fellow, Ryszard Bielański, Peter said that talking with Ryszard was like going to confession since Ryszard understood things that others would not. Magda knows that people rarely voice their deepest secrets, but she hates the thought of her father carrying his “cross” on his own. She finds a Polish priest, Father Słowick, and arranges for him to meet with Peter. Peter is impressed with the priest’s Polish and decides to see him again. When Father Słowick recites last rites at the hospital before Peter’s death, a tear leaves Peter’s eye. Magda wonders what Peter will find in death—judgment, forgiveness, or nothing.
Magda realizes that how she feels about Peter’s actions depends on what she believes about God and the afterlife. Of the possibilities—judgment, forgiveness, or nothing—Peter fears judgment most of all: in his confession to his priest, Peter reveals his belief that God won’t understand him and will therefore judge him. In arranging for Peter to see the priest, however, Magda suggests that part of her believes that Peter’s sins are pardonable: that God will listen to him and forgive him..
Themes
Father Słowick delivers a somber mass at Peter’s funeral, remarking that only God knows what is in a person’s soul. Afterward, Barb—whom Margaret exclaims is too sensitive for the world—bravely sings “Ave Maria,” reducing the guests to tears. At the reception, a woman implores Magda to “understand” that only the brave were enlisted by the army to do what Peter did. Since Polish history is so awful, most Polish conversations, including those Magda had with Peter, begin with “understand...” Later, Margaret gives Magda a few pages of Peter’s attempts to tell his story. Magda feels that her father lived by escaping his awful past; now, she feels a responsibility to tell his story. She wonders if she can do it justice.
The woman uses the word “understand” less to ask Magda to empathize as to encourage Magda to recalibrate her beliefs and instincts to align with Peter’s past, when life was very different. In that “awful” part of history, people made choices based on principles very different from the ones Magda holds, and so “understanding” will require her to shift her perspective. Magda’s attempts to write Peter’s story will be acts of translation—through understanding—into what is essentially a different language of existence.
Themes
