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Chapter 6
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in These Violent Delights, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Factions, Feuds, and Forbidden Love
Retaliation and Justice
Imperialism and Greed
Moral Complexity, Betrayal, and Forgiveness
Power, Responsibility, and Monstrosity
Summary
Analysis
Over the next few days, rumors spread through the city about the monster in the river. Juliette would have dismissed the rumors as outlandish, but she can tell that people are genuinely afraid, which makes Juliette believe that there must be some truth to what people are saying. One day, when Juliette is walking through the city, a man stops her. He tells her that someone gave him a cure for the disease. Juliette dismisses the man as mentally unwell.
The novel has previously referenced a flyer advertising vaccines for the madness. In this passage, a man claims to have received a vaccine that cured him of the disease. In that way, the novel once more points to a mysterious vaccine for the contagion and raises suspicions about that vaccine, as Juliette dismisses the person who tells her about it as mentally unwell.
Themes
Juliette then thinks of the rumors about her, which say she strangled her American lover with a necklace and that she killed four members of the White Flower Gang with three bullets. Only one of those rumors is true. She also thinks about the first time she killed someone, which happened when she was 14. The White Flower Gang ambushed her family, and Juliette killed one of the gang members to save face in front of her family after she initially froze during the attack.
This passage shows that violence is part and parcel with Juliette’s life in the Scarlet Gang. Notably, the first time Juliette killed someone, she did so because she felt pressure to save face in front of her family. That points to the ways that, within the gangs in the novel, characters like Juliette may be initially averse to committing violence but are then pushed into acting in ways they would not choose on their own through social and familial pressure.
Themes
As Juliette is walking, she feels a gun pointed against her back. The person with the gun tells Juliette to keep walking, and Juliette recognizes the person’s voice as Roma’s. Juliette then wrestles Roma to the ground and holds him a knifepoint. The two then disarm, and Juliette asks Roma what he wants. Roma explains that what’s causing people to tear out their throats might be a contagious disease. He says he needs to see the body of the man who died at the burlesque club to verify if the shoe he found belongs to that man. Juliette eventually agrees to help Roma because she wants the information he’s after just as much as he does.
Roma explicitly suggests that the madness spreading through the city is a kind of disease. The novel has also previously established that Juliette and Roma were once romantically involved, but the blood feud between their families drove them apart. The fact that they have now decided to begin working together suggests that they recognize the threat posed by the contagion is bigger and more important than the feud between them and their families.
Themes
