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
In 1992, Magda takes her parents to Warsaw. There, Peter returns to a state of happy youth. Poland, having rejected communism in 1989, is a brighter place. At a welcome dinner with the extended family, Peter’s cousin Rajmund teaches Magda to chase vodka with caviar. On the commemoration day of the Warsaw Uprising, Magda meets Agnieszka, an acting school friend of Magda Zawadzka’s, in a cemetery. Agnieszka saunters toward Magda while a man—who happens to be her ex-husband—photographs her. When Magda rejoins her family, Andrzej shows her the graves of Girl Scouts—the first to be killed by the Nazis.
It comes as a surprise that Peter is happy and youthful while in Poland. Peter did everything he could to escape Poland and its culture—he moved to Australia, refused to teach Magda Polish, and never made a point of visiting his family until now. Therefore, Peter’s joy at the return suggests that what he had been running from was not his unhappiness in Poland, but rather the fear that the war had irreparably destroyed his ability to be happy there.
Themes
A few days later, Agnieszka takes Magda to a party where she promises there will be lesbians. When Magda gets drunk and is driven home, Peter meets her at the door; Magda attempts to talk normally with him. The next morning, when Magda starts to tell Peter about the party, Peter says that Magda already told him about it the night before, in fluent Polish.
Magda has always wanted to speak Polish, lamenting the language barrier between her and her ancestors. The fact that Magda speaks Polish while drunk suggests a remarkable power of legacy: subconsciously, Magda and her ancestors are connected more than she has been aware.
Themes
Despite his years abroad, Peter’s Polish is excellent. Magda and Margaret, who failed in their attempts to learn Polish, feel left out around Peter’s family and the “impenetrable wall of whispers” they raise when they speak Polish. One night, frustrated that she can’t participate in the conversation, Margaret starts yelling out random English words. Guiltily, Magda laughs. Peter is angry: for years, he has been the foreigner, yet Margaret and Magda can’t bear three days of that feeling.
This scene gives perspective on Peter’s experience since the war. While he appears adapted to post-war life, Peter feels as though he hears “whispers.” The whispers of a foreign language are an “impenetrable wall,” an image that speaks to how disempowering it is not to speak your society’s language: without common language, a person is cut off from others as by a wall.
Themes
From Warsaw, the family takes a road trip, stopping at the salt mines of Wieliczka and at Cracow (the ancient capital of Poland). Although it is sunny when they go to Auschwitz, the family feels nervous. From the outside, Auschwitz looks like a humble village; inside the buildings, however, there are piles of human hair and baby shoes. When Magda and Margaret start to cry, Peter states that this is the truth.
Warsaw’s history is not simply recorded in textbooks—it is told in physical reminders of the brutality of war, like Auschwitz. Peter’s rebuttal to Margaret’s and Magda’s tears suggests that crying is the appropriate response to what is absurd and horrific, while what Peter sees before him is reality. To Peter, the grim reality of war is objective, irrefutable, normal—and therefore unmoving.
Themes
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When the family drives to Birkenau, the women’s prison and extermination camp, Margaret refuses to leave the car; she backs away, tears streaming down her face. As Magda and Peter walk through the ruins, Magda scans Peter’s face for emotion, but she finds nothing. Magda realizes how her father survived the war: he never showed fear, and he didn’t allow himself to feel grief. Poland, Magda observes, is the world’s cemetery, a “monument to shame.” Magda senses Peter’s reproach of Margaret’s feelings. Magda sympathizes with both of her parent’s reactions. But being 31 and feeling the weight of responsibility, she aligns with Peter’s stoicism.
Margaret and Peter represent two opposing reactions to spectacles of extreme suffering. While both parents recognize something essential—Margaret that the extermination camp is horrific and Peter that it is the truth—Margaret is incapacitated by her emotions while Peter is able to move forward, albeit robotically. In this way, Peter’s response is more useful for functionality. On the other hand, Margaret’s reaction is more human, suggesting that the war forced many to sacrifice some of their humanity in order to survive.
Themes
When Magda and her parents leave Warsaw, they bring home gifts. Magda Zawadzka gives Magda an amber necklace with a shadowy insect trapped in the gem. In contrast to Ovid’s myth, in which amber comes from the tears that sisters cried when their brother crashed their Sun God father’s chariot, Poland believes that amber comes from the ancient pine forests by the Baltic Sea: when a pine tree was wounded, it secreted sap to heal itself, often trapping insects. When the Baltic Sea flooded, the amber was trapped until tides loosened the gems, which then floated to the surface.
Amber, and the way in which Poland believes it was created, is a symbol for Poland itself. Wounded in World War II, Poland’s identity was for years suppressed by trauma and oppressive governments. Only after a long and slow process will Poland be able to lift itself from its past. The story of amber’s creation becomes a symbol of self-actualization for Magda: after much struggle, Magda’s true self has climbed nearer and nearer to the surface.
Themes
