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Chapter 7
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
The trips to Shenzhen typically consist of work in Shenzhen and then a weekend of leisure in Hong Kong. Blythe is an avid shopper, and Candace follows her around through the various vast and opulent malls trying to keep up with her spending. Candace is amazed by the number of iterations of luxury items: the item itself, the prototype, and the range of knockoffs from cheap to near-replica. A woman at one mall sells Candace a range of expensive skin products, and Candace recalls her mother travelling to Hong Kong to get her moles removed, a procedure that still left her with white spots where the moles had once been.
Candace’s mother’s moles and her unwavering commitment to skincare illustrate her fraught relationship to her racial identity. On the one hand Candace’s mother (and Candace herself) is attending to a key part of her identity by taking care of their skin. But the literal whitening of Candace’s mother’s face also reflects how a culture of white supremacy has caused her to resent her appearance and cultural background. As much as she misses her home and values her culture, living in America and feeling like a perpetual outsider there compels her to reject the parts of herself that contribute to that sense of alienation. She mindlessly goes along with the systemic inequality that oppresses her. Consumer culture—as represented by the myriad skincare products she applies daily—offers a means to blend in.
Active
Themes
While Blythe visits her on-and-off boyfriend in Macau, Candace takes a night to herself. She asks her cab driver to bring her somewhere for “walking” which he interprets as “shopping.” They arrive at a traditional night market, and Candace wanders the streets, feeling something akin to that “Fuzhou Nighttime Feeling.” There are various shrines around, and some stalls selling “spirit money,” faux yellow bank notes with gold foil and tied with a red string that people in China burn to grant to family members and ancestors in the afterlife. There are other afterlife luxuries too‑cardboard cutouts of sportscars and handbags. Candace buys a stack of spirit money to bring home with her.
In an attempt to reject the global capitalist monuments of Hong Kong’s malls, Candace tries attending an authentic Hong Kong night market. As a result, she connects more with her memories of Fuzhou, and also feels more like that quintessential urban feeling—not the massive malls, but the crowded streets of small, local businesses. Candace’s purchase of spirit money is an act of consumerism that symbolically rejects global capitalism—she opts to invest in a meaningful cultural experience rather than the usual mindless consumerism.
Active
Themes
When she gets back to New York, Candace goes out to her fire escape and burns the stack of money to honor her parents. Feeling the gift inadequate, Candace cuts out advertisements from Jane’s collection of magazines to burn as other offerings to her parents. Books and suits for her father, and designer clothes and moisturizers for her mother, as well as a wealth of other things. The acrid ink from the magazine pages stings her nose, and Candace imagines her folks overwhelmed by riches, even in the afterlife, unsure of what to do with it all.
Active
Themes
