Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Thérèse Raquin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Passion and Pleasure
Consequences and Delusion
Dependency and Resentment
Money, Greed, and Class
Summary
Analysis
Three weeks pass. Laurent still hasn’t come up with a safe way of murdering Camille. While playing dominoes on Thursday night, he and Thérèse listen to Michaud talk about how frequently murder cases go unsolved. Grivet is horrified to hear him say this, finding it terrifying to think that there are murderers walking the streets. But both Michaud and Olivier confirm that it’s quite common for killers to go undetected. As they listen, Thérèse and Laurent don’t even smile at the small jokes their friends make throughout the course of the conversation. For a brief, intense moment, their eyes meet.
The conversation at the domino table introduces the fact that murderers often go undetected. This idea validates Thérèse and Laurent’s previous discussion about how it’s possible to kill somebody without getting caught, thus encouraging them to go through with their plan—after all, they’ve now heard from two men trained in policework that there are often no consequences for committing murder. And though this might be true, what they fail to consider is that avoiding legal punishment doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be any emotional consequences for taking a human life.
Themes
