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
Zoë catches Julia googling William Rainsferd. Julia abashedly admits that she has looked William up “regularly in the past year,” and that she knows he his back in the States, living in New York City. Zoë tells Julia that she has to let go, but Julia insists that she “need[s] to know if what [she] did helped him.” Zoë replies that William probably never wants to see Julia again. Julia hugs Zoë and resolves to take her advice about moving on, though she doesn’t know how to begin.
This chapter paints a complicated picture of Zoë. Her advice to her mom is characterized as at once mature and perceptive, and slightly dismissive of Julia’s compulsive need for closure with William. Zoë seems to be living in the “in-between” of childhood and adulthood, a phase that Sarah never got to experience.
Themes
