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Chapter 21
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Severance, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Capitalism and Autonomy
Immigrant Identity
Consumerism
Corporate Power and Sexism
Urban Ecologies
Summary
Analysis
Back in the height of the pandemic, Candace continues to go to work. When the subways shut down, she takes an increasingly inconvenient maze of buses and shuttles. One morning the elevator snags between the 26th and 27th floor. She presses the emergency button, but nobody responds from city services. Eventually the elevator wakes back up and carries her to the 32nd floor. There she calls 911 to report the incident, the operator is surprised to hear she is still there working, explaining that pretty much everyone has left midtown. Candace is frustrated, and the operator bristles, reminding Candace of just how many things they have to deal with and how they just don’t have the resources. Candace tries calling Michael but gets no response.
The pandemic reaches its climax, and still Candace continues to go to work. It is only when there is a serious technical snag with the elevator that Candace is finally shaken from the stupor of her routine and forced to confront the state of the world around her.
Active
Themes
Candace looks outside and realizes that Times Square is totally deserted. Ghetto palms have begun to sprout up from the concrete, and vegetation has begun to reclaim the urban space. Candace is struck by the idea that she is looking both into the future and the past—at the city decades from now, reclaimed by greenery, and at the original natural landscape that existed before the Dutch settlers arrived. Candace hears bells and notices a horse from a Central Park buggy wandering untethered down the street. She snaps a photo and posts it on NY Ghost, her first post in forever.
The lack of people begins to expose New York City to Candace. She is struck by the way nature reclaims the city, and she is able to see the past, present, and future iterations of the city authentically and outside the ideals she has attached to it. Truly seeing the city inspires Candace to return to NY Ghost—and perhaps this time, her photos of the city will reflect her new, more honest vision of it.
Active
Themes
Candace continues going to work at Spectra in the mornings, taking the stairs instead of the elevator. NY Ghost becomes her full-time job and obsession, and the Spectra office becomes its headquarters. She documents every inch of the city: grand abandoned institutions, parks and fields full of wild horses and birds, the flooded Subways. She photographs some of the Sentinel security guards left to guard businesses and private homes—formerly military contractors that the U.S. worked with during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now private security. Candace wears her mask out and about to signal that she is still lucid, as by now most agree that the precaution had no actual effect on staunching the spread.
Active
Themes
By late October all major new outlets cease publishing, and slowly NY Ghost begins receiving more and more visitors. They are mostly from places like Iceland—Northern, frozen places whose colder climates slowed the spread of the disease and whose governments were able to close borders easily. Visitors to the website request photos of certain places around the city, and Candace takes them as assignments, mapping out New York and scheduling how she will tackle each series. The process makes her fall in love with the actual place, where before she felt so wrapped up in the myth of the city propagated in media and personal dreams.
Active
Themes
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Even as the wandering fevered dwindle, Candace tries not to photograph them out of a confusing sense of human respect. The one exception is a post she makes with a short video of a fevered in a Juicy Couture store, continuing to fold clothes and keep the place pristine even as she is missing her entire jaw. It becomes the blog’s most popular post, with some expressing concern for Candace’s safety and others accusing her of filming disaster porn, or even of being fevered herself.
Active
Themes
One morning the shuttles stop arriving. Candace had been avoiding cabs and being alone with men in general due to the total lapse in law enforcement of any kind. Eventually she lands on a driver named Eddie, a Hispanic man. When she mentions she runs a blog he gets excited and admits to looking at the photos on NY Ghost often. Eddie talks about continuing to work just to have something to do, and he reports that the blog reaffirms his love of the city. Eddie briefly went to a rural commune with a cousin but ended up coming back to the city when he didn’t get along with the people there. He insists New York is his home, and all he really knows. He also enjoys the lack of White people in New York City these days, since most fled during the later days of the pandemic, and he tells Candace she should make a post about the immigrants inheriting the city.
In November, Candace moves into the Spectra offices fulltime. She tries to call up Eddie that morning, but nobody picks up. The driver she ends up with is far less friendly. Candace repurposes the office into her home base, raiding the cabinets and vending machines, and breaking into Michael’s office to turn it into her bedroom. As she lies down to sleep, she notices that Michael’s office has a skylight, and without the light pollution she can see the stars. Falling asleep, Candace feels the baby move for the first time.
Active
Themes
