Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Sarah’s Key, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Remembrance and History
The Power of Silence
Guilt
Identity
Bravery
The Limits of Love
Summary
Analysis
Julia leaves for New York City, “propelled back across the Atlantic like a piece of steel pulled by a powerful magnet.” She is determined to track down Richard Rainsferd and, in doing so, Sarah. Before leaving, Julia calls Edouard and promises him she is going to do her best to find out what happened to Sarah.
Julia’s feeling that she is being drawn across the ocean on her mission to find Sarah suggests that Julia’s sense of self-fulfillment is bound up with learning about Sarah’s fate. The magnet simile seems to indicate that Julia and Sarah are somehow cosmically connected, by a force much more powerful than can be easily comprehended or explained.
Themes
