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
After coming out, Magda feels like a “nervous hostage” who doesn’t dare embrace freedom. Though the public supports her, Magda feels “hyper-visible.” She hears of a friend of a friend who killed himself after coming out, and she later retreats into the comfort of weight gain. Needing to get out of Australia, Magda travels to Warsaw; she goes to dinner with Magda Zawadzka’s son and his wife. Magda hopes that she can finally lay to rest the ghost of Europe that has been living inside her.
Magda is well into adulthood by the time she comes out about her sexuality. In other words, Magda has concealed this part of herself for so long that secrecy has become a part of her nature. Therefore, coming out—although it is an admission of her true self—makes Magda feel other than herself. The exposure is hyper-painful because it has come suddenly after so many years.
Themes
Andrzej is now dead, and Danuta—now in her 90s—is losing her memory, so Magda knows that this visit is her last chance to “check the facts” of her history. At Danuta’s apartment, Magda records Danuta—whose aged skin is transparent—as she recalls her past. Danuta remembers feeling fear; one night, while delivering pamphlets for an underground women’s conspiracy, a German stared at Danuta, who was young and beautiful. Although the German let her go, Danuta was a nervous wreck: having lost her nerve, she was no longer fit for the women’s conspiracy.
Magda’s family history lives in the minds of her ancestors. Therefore, this history is not a stable, ever-accessible thing. First, it is liable to the fluctuations of the person’s memory and to their various emotions. Second, the history disappears with the person when they die, leaving behind no possibility of its recovery. Fluid and time-sensitive, Magda’s history exists within her connections to others.
Themes
When Magda asks about the Jewish boy, Danuta says that his name Jurek and his mother’s name was Hella. Since Danuta looked like she could be Jurek’s mother, Danuta was put in charge of him; she would comfort him and show him the sky through the window. When Magda asks how Jadwiga told Hella to leave, Danuta can’t recall; Jadwiga cried, and Jurek clung to Danuta. Danuta says that Hella was surely caught, for she looked Jewish. But she must have been brave: she did not name the family that hid her, as many Jews did when tortured by the Germans. When Magda leaves, she marvels at Danuta’s ability to love in the midst of horror and fear. Magda never sees Danuta again.
Just before the end of the memoir, the full story comes out about the Jewish boy. Until this point, the boy has had no name and was known to Magda as “the Jewish boy.” Nameless, the boy was a symbol of the emotionally and morally complex nature of war. Now, having been given a name, the boy ceases to be a symbol and becomes real. He was a specific case in which the Szubanskis made specific choices. In drawing out Danuta’s remarkable love in the face of fear, Jurek defied war’s power to divide and destroy.
Themes
