Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Immortalists, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fate vs. Choice
Family and Shared History
Obsession
Death, Meaning, and Legacy
Surviving vs. Living
Magic, Religion, Dance, and Possibility
Summary
Analysis
In Vegas, Klara and Raj rent a car and drive to the strip. They walk into The Mirage hotel and see that Siegfried and Roy have just started a show. They sneak in to watch the men perform with dozens of exotic animals and women in shell bikinis. It’s exactly what Klara doesn’t want, but performing there means that they can make more money. Forty years earlier, Siegfried and Roy fled postwar Germany, and now they have a cast and crew of 250 people.
To others, magic is simply a job and a way of providing entertainment. But Klara views it as more than that. From her humble beginnings performing in clubs, she has emphasized intimacy over gaudiness, because her goal is to expand people’s perceptions of reality and not just provide a spectacle.
Themes
A few days later, Klara hears the knocks again. Using Saul’s gold watch, Klara determines that the knocks spell “MEET.” Klara is stunned, thinking that perhaps Simon isn’t completely dead. Perhaps he, and even Saul, can communicate with her. Meanwhile, Raj meets with different contacts at the casinos, and he returns one day with a phone number.
Here the novel plants the seeds of Klara’s instability. Not only does she think that Simon is communicating with her, but her obsession with understanding what he might be saying leads her to think that she might be able to meet with him physically.
Themes
