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’s “very cells” feel different. For Mardi Gras, Magda participates in a parade float for an LGBTQI Youth Group of which Magda is now the official patron. Feeling a surge of maternal pride for this group, Magda reflects on how much Poland and Ireland informed her journey to self-acceptance; after four decades of struggling to embrace her sexuality, she now uses the word “lesbian” with pride.
Although coming out seems to be the admission of something immaterial, the act changes Magda’s physical sensation. The fact that her “cells” feel different suggests that such acts of self-acceptance alter a person on an almost genetic level: if trauma can be genetic, self-acceptance could be genetically formative.
Themes
Magda and Margaret—now kinder to each other than they used to be—sit in Margaret and Peter’s recliners. Magda wishes that Peter were there. She also wishes that Meg, Luke, Jadwiga, Mieczysław, Andrzej and Danuta were there: she wants to tell them how well Peter readied her for life. Peter gave Magda optimism, honesty, and love of life. If Peter had seen Magda come out, he would have been proud. However, Margaret and Magda—not lions but “trembling sheep”—had had to find their own courage.
At the end of her memoir, Magda feels positively toward Peter and the legacy he left her. This shows a remarkable change from the beginning of the memoir, where Magda detailed her haunting doubt over Peter’s character and her resentment at the guilt he infected her with. Ultimately, Magda’s journey was not about uncovering information wither incriminating or absolving, but about acceptance.
Themes
