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Chapter 2
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Adventures of Augie March, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fate, Fortune, and Luck
Self-Discovery and Identity
Love and Sex
The Myth of the American Dream
Control vs. Freedom
Family
Summary
Analysis
Grandma Lausch avoids giving Simon and Augie jobs that are too “common.” Augie suspects they’ve become surrogates for her own grown sons, who don’t pay enough attention to her. She makes Simon and Augie wash and carry themselves well so that they’ll be prepared when opportunity strikes, because America is the land of opportunity for all.
With their overblown and expressive way of communicating their feelings—especially their unhappiness—and their obsessive concern with the lives and fortunes of their offspring, both Grandma Lausch and Cousin Anna fulfill (and help to inform) the stereotypes of the hovering, over-involved Jewish mother that can still be found in American popular culture. Grandma’s concern for Augie’s and Simon’s well-being is genuine, even if it is overly focused on only one aspect of life: wealth and status. Grandma Lausch also offers an early lesson in the social construction of identity. She wants Simon and Augie to carry themselves like gentlemen, believing that this will increase their potential to become gentlemen.
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Initially, Simon is an obedient child and an excellent student. He becomes valedictorian of his high school class. Augie does well at school when he applies himself—he even skips a grade at one point. But he finds it all too easy to get distracted, and as he gets older, he starts skipping class more and more. And as he reaches adulthood, Simon also stops being so well-behaved. He comes back from that summer job in Michigan with a chipped tooth and won’t say how he got it. He spends some of his income on himself instead of giving it all to Mama and Grandma.
The contrast between Simon’s and Augie’s experiences in school foreshadows the differing paths they will take into adulthood. Simon agrees wholeheartedly with Grandma’s view that money and status are the most important things in life, and he sets his sights on attaining them from a young age. Augie has the same potential but lacks his brothers’ single-minded focus and drive. Even so, as he gets older and closer to maturity, Simon begins to rebel against Grandma’s rule and to assert his right to privacy and self-determination, something the novel sees as a proper step toward adulthood.
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For a while, Augie and Simon work together, whether they’re filling in for Hyman Coblin or working in the stockrooms of a downtown department store. But then Simon gets a job manning a concession stand at the railroad station for the Federal News Company. They give him a sharp-looking uniform. He sees wealthy and powerful people passing through the station every day, some of whom are his customers. The family secretly hopes that one of them will notice Simon and pluck him from obscurity.
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Themes
Eventually, Grandma Lausch pressures Simon into getting Augie a job for the Federal News Company, too. But Augie’s cash drawer always comes up short, and after three weeks he gets fired. Secretly, he blames the bad location of his stand and his customers. But Grandma berates him over his failure. She ends her tirade with a warning that she won’t live forever. What will Augie do when she’s dead in her grave and can no longer help him? Augie is startled by this question, as he has never heard Grandma admit to her own mortality before.
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Augie decides to look for work himself, alongside his friend Jimmy Klein. Grandma despises the Kleins, although Augie finds the complicated, messy family pleasant enough. Two of Jimmy’s siblings are divorced, a third is widowed, and a fourth adult sister, Eleanor, has a chronic illness and still lives at home. The Kleins buy a lot of things, most of which they cannot afford and so purchase on various installment plans.
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In the end, Grandma might be right about Jimmy being a bad influence, because the longer Augie hangs around with him, the more he skips school. (Although Steve the Sailor Bulba, a bully in science class, also contributes to his truancy). Some days, Augie and Jimmy skip class and go down to City Hall, where Jimmy’s brother Tom is an elevator operator. Augie loves rubbing elbows with exciting, wealthy, and important people in the elevator.
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Other days, Jimmy and Augie hawk random goods for Jimmy’s Uncle Tambow, an overweight, divorced, well-connected political operator who buys and sells unlicensed goods out of a temporary stand on Milwaukee Avenue. Sylvester, whose theater has folded and whose wife has left him, works for Tambow, too. Augie likes him because he talks to Augie and Jimmy as equals.
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