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Chapter 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Beast in the Jungle, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fate and Failure
Understanding and Connection
Love and Loss
Courage vs. Cowardice
Summary
Analysis
The conversation between Marcher and May on May’s birthday ends up being a turning point. At first, the only thing it does is make Marcher more determined to be selfless with May, so he invites her out to events like the opera. After one of these outings, he repeats his question from her birthday, asking what keeps her appearing normal. May admits that she’s gossiped about in society, but she still thinks her friendship with Marcher makes her look normal, too. Besides, her main concern is helping Marcher “pass” for an ordinary person. He asks how he can repay her for that kindness, and after a pause, she says that he can repay her by simply doing what he’s doing.
Marcher continues to act selfishly in an attempt to be selfless—taking May out to the opera definitely isn’t the most selfless thing he could do. In fact, he might actually be making her life harder by hanging out with her publicly, as May implies here that their relationship is the subject of gossip. It's safe to assume that this gossip centers around the fact that Marcher and May are unmarried and spend all their time together—May might want to believe that she seems “normal,” but she also confirms that she’s not treated that way. Apparently, a single man can spend time with a woman, but not vice versa. If Marcher married May, he would be genuinely selfless, but he doesn’t consider that possibility. Once again, May’s motivations for devoting her life to Marcher—and, as readers see here, making sacrifices for him—are unclear, but she clearly enjoys his (one-sided) friendship.
Themes
The two of them continue on without mentioning their conversation on May’s birthday. Marcher is almost afraid to confront May about her knowledge of his fate, though he’s now convinced that she doesn’t know anything more than he does—even though being a woman makes her intuitive. For the first time, Marcher begins to worry that he’ll lose May in an accident someday, though this loss still wouldn’t be the fate he’s waiting for. Lately, he’s become even more dependent on her and he’s noticed that her health is failing. In fact, all his concerns mixed together make him begin to wonder whether his fate is soon approaching.
Marcher might have decided that May doesn’t know what his fate is, but his fear of asking her about it suggests that he’s not being honest with himself—if he really believed that May didn’t know his fate, he wouldn’t be afraid to discuss it. Marcher has already claimed to be courageous, but this seems like cowardice, further muddying Marcher and May’s already-contradictory definition of bravery. Marcher once again demonstrates that he's not as selfless as he’d like to believe he is, as he seems concerned about May only because he depends on her. Yet he doesn’t truly value their friendship, because he doesn’t think that May’s death could be his fate—in other words, her death wouldn’t be life-shattering for him.
Themes
One day, May tells Marcher that she’s afraid she has a blood disorder. Marcher immediately thinks that this is a personal loss for May, since she won’t get to see what his fate ends up being. He’s happy that this is his first thought, since the fact that he’s worried about May proves he’s still a selfless person. And if May does know what his fate is, that makes it even worse that she won’t live to see it. May can no longer leave the house, so Marcher goes to visit her. One day, he notices that she’s much older than he remembered, which means that he’s old, too. This realization shocks him, as does the fact that her old age is the thing that made him think of his own.
This passage is intentionally tongue-in-cheek and meant to underscore Marcher’s egotism. Marcher believes he’s selfless because his first thought is that May won’t experience his fate with him, but that means his first thought is still centered around his future, not May’s suffering. However, the reason Marcher believes that he immediately thought of May before himself is because he (at least subconsciously) considers his fate to be partly May’s as well, or at least hers to witness. Marcher believes he’s unique, but once again, he and May are having the same experience. This is highlighted by the fact that Marcher only realizes his own age by noticing May’s.
Themes
After this incident, Marcher continues to have revelations, and it feels almost like they’ve been held back until the end of his life. For instance, he starts to wonder if maybe his fate is to see May die after all. Still, while he admires May greatly, he still thinks this fate would be anticlimactic. He would even consider it a failure, since he’s been waiting for a very different kind of fate.
This passage is an expansion of the conversation Marcher and May had at Weatherend, during which they touched on both love and failure. At the time, May believed that Marcher’s fate might be to fall in love, and Marcher thought that love wasn’t dramatic enough to be his fate. In this passage, it becomes clear that Marcher doesn’t think that any emotional upheaval will factor into his fate. And as he did during the Weatherend conversation, Marcher demonstrates that his idea of success is a thrilling life, and anything less is failure.
Themes
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As May grows sicker, Marcher begins to worry that May might have been waiting for his great fate in vain. He thinks that May’s demise can only mean one thing: it’s too late for Marcher’s fate to happen. He’s never allowed himself to worry about this before, since he assumed he had time. Now, there’s no time left—he’s not young anymore. But if there’s no fate, he’ll have failed. Marcher wouldn’t have considered other, terrible fates to be a failure—for instance, bankruptcy or death. In fact, his fate should be proportionate to the time he spent anticipating it, so suffering would make sense. All he wants is to not have been waiting for nothing.
Once again, Marcher (unintentionally) proves that his experience isn’t a unique one, as he assumes that his fate won’t come after May dies—thus confirming that she’s part of his fate and is having the same experience as him. Marcher also expands on his ideas about failure. Not only does he think a mundane life is a failure, but he thinks that horrific fates would make him successful. By normal logic, bankruptcy is failure. But Marcher’s logic is backwards, as he thinks that bankruptcy would make him successful, solely because it would prove that his fate is real. Again, it makes sense that Marcher is frightened by the possibility that no fate is coming—he’s spent his life conveniently believing he had no control over his circumstances, and if that proved false, he would have to re-evaluate all his choices.
Themes
