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Act Two, Scene Ten
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Shoe-Horn Sonata, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Survival, Resilience, and Catharsis
Pride and Patriotism
Friendship, Sacrifice, and Resentment
Trauma and Repression
Summary
Analysis
In their next interview with Rick, Bridie and Sheila explain that their choir “disband[ed]” in April of 1945 because too many of the singers had died, including Miss Dryburgh. As such, both women felt depressed and hopeless, but Sheila decided to arrange sonatas, which are “piece[s] for two musical instruments.” In this way, Sheila and Bridie continued singing, bringing music to the camp so that everyone “would know there was still music left.” “It probably sounded bloody awful,” Bridie says. “But not to us. To us we still had harmony… and the Japs could never ever take that away.”
Once more, Misto frames an immaterial manifestation of joy as a form of resilience. Indeed, Bridie and Sheila know that the guards can “never ever take” away their capacity to sing, so they continue making music. In doing so, they assert their own agency and resist complete oppression.
Active
Themes
Sheila tells Rick that she returned to the camp 30 years after the war. Although she’d spent so much time “trying to forget” what had happened, she wanted to find the cemetery where they’d buried all of their friends. Tragically, though, there were no headstones, so the bodies lie in unmarked graves. “Why did you go back?” Rick asks, and Sheila says, “Because I’d never really left.”
Active
Themes
