Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Running in the Family, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory, History, and Story
Alcoholism
Ancestry, Homeland, and Identity
Irresponsibility in the 1920s
Colonialism
Summary
Analysis
When Lalla is older, almost a grandmother, she boards a cramped bus. The man next to her puts his arm behind her shoulder to make more room. After a few minutes, other passengers look shocked and ashamed. Lalla looks down and realizes that the man next to her has moved his hand down and is smugly groping her breast. Lalla smiles to herself. That breast had been removed years ago—the man is groping a sponge.
Lalla’s dark humor at what could be taken as a grotesque, assaulting action suggests that she is a woman who prefers to laugh at misfortune rather than dwell on it. Lalla’s reaction gives the sense that in this era, the dark reality of the world is largely ignored.
Themes
