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Chapter 13
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Go-Between, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Social Class and Hierarchy
Coming of Age and Trauma
Masculinity
Fate, Myth, and Magic
Love, Sex, and Marriage
Summary
Analysis
The following Sunday morning is utterly blissful for Leo. His triumphant role in both the cricket match and the singing afterwards make him feel that belongs to the celestial world, at one with his “dream life.” Furthermore, he is happy that Marian will marry Trimingham, whom he considers “his idol.”
This is Leo’s happiest moment in the book, basking in the glories of his catch and his singing. Further, he assumes that because Marian is now engaged, the affair will stop, and he won’t be tangled in the situation any longer.
Active
Themes
Leo assumes that he will no longer be required to take messages between Marian and Ted, due to her engagement to Trimingham. Although he likes Ted in a “half-admiring, half-hating way,” the “spell” of Ted’s physical presence intimidates him. Leo admires Ted’s manliness but feels he has defeated Ted twice (through the cricket match and the singing). Because he overshadowed Ted, he no longer finds him a “discordant” thought that he has to resolve.
Leo naively believes that everything has been brought to its logical conclusion. Weighing up Trimingham and Ted, Leo prefers Trimingham, as he represents a world he feels he has come to understand: the upper class. Ted is still mysterious, and his ability to cast a physical “spell” is a rival to Leo’s supernatural powers.
Active
Themes
Leo writes a letter to his mother, outlining his current happiness and asking to stay at Brandham Hall for longer. Leo remembers that Ted had said he would tell Leo about “spooning”, and Leo thinks that out of politeness he will visit Ted at some point in the next couple of weeks. Leo notices that, though it’s cloudy, the temperature is continuing to rise.
Active
Themes
Later in the day, Leo attends church again. He is glad that the service doesn’t last too long, as he feels “impatient with Christianity” and that there isn’t a “flaw in the universe.” He notices that the Viscount memorials on the wall include their wives too, and imagines Marian’s name up there.
Active
Themes
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After the service, Leo walks home with Trimingham. They talk about how well Marian plays the piano, and Leo asks Trimingham why there is no fifth Viscount on the wall. Trimingham tells him that the fifth Viscount died in a duel over his wife. Evidently, she had been “too friendly with another man”; after challenging this other man, the fifth Viscount was killed in the ensuing duel and buried in France. Leo asks whether the fifth Viscount would have minded so much if he had and his wife had not been married, to which Trimingham says he assumes so. Leo momentarily considers that there is a parallel between the fifth Viscount’s situation and Trimingham’s.
Active
Themes
Leo asks Trimingham whether the untimely death of the fifth Viscount was his wife’s fault. Trimingham insists “nothing is ever a lady’s fault.” Leo asks if men still shoot each other over ladies, to which Trimingham replies “sometimes.” They discuss the Boer war, which is where Trimingham sustained his facial injury. He says the Boers aren’t innately bad, and it’s a shame that so many of them had to be shot.
