Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Flivver King, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Capitalism and Dehumanization
American Idealism and Disillusionment
Misinformation, Media Bias, and Ignorance
Individualism vs. Unionization
Technology and Progress
Summary
Analysis
The Shutts desperately try to figure out how to get money. They can’t even afford the taxes on their own house, nor can they sell their home or furniture because many people are doing the same thing and no one is buying anything. Instead, the Shutts decide to rent rooms to workers, but the men who stay with them often scam them and leave without paying rent.
Here, the Shutts truly begin to recognize that the capitalist system doesn’t protect people like them. Instead, it deprives them of their most basic needs and makes them even more vulnerable to crime.
Themes
In the first winter of the Great Depression, old Tom Shutt dies, and the Shutts are able to give him a nice burial. But when Abner’s mother dies a year later, they don’t have the money to bury her—a fact that breaks their hearts. Meanwhile, Abner forgets that Hank is a bootlegger and a gangster and lets Milly take whatever money Hank brings. But even Hank’s business isn’t doing very well, as no one can afford the more expensive liquors anymore. Meanwhile, Tommy decides study economics at college, to understand the forces in the world that have left his family so destitute.
The Shutts continue to feel the dire effects of the Great Depression. Not being able to bury Abner’s mother strips them of dignity, and Abner no longer feels that he has to hold on to his own morals when it comes to receiving money that his son earns illegally. But perhaps the greatest indication of disillusionment lies with Tommy, who recognizes the problems with the way the American economic system works and attends college in order to investigate it.
Themes
