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Chapter 16
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Transcendent Kingdom, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science and Religion
Self-Discovery, Identity, and Individuality
Addiction, Depression, and Control
Trauma, Caretaking, and Intimacy
Summary
Analysis
Gifty’s sophomore year at Harvard was very hard. She struggled to collaborate in her Integrated Science course and her participation grade struggled. Although she practiced things to say in class, she couldn’t bring herself to talk. Her lab partners, Yao, Molly, Zach, Anne, and Ernest, tended to exclude her. Zach was a goofball, and one day he joked about students on campus handing out small Bibles, claiming he’d taken one and then climbed onto a statue to shout, “GOD DOESN’T EXIST!”
Gifty struggled when asked to work with others, because she had trained herself not to need the help of other people. But she learned to overcome this in Integrated Sciences, in part because her lack of participation was interpreted as a lack of knowledge or intelligence by others, especially her male classmate Yao. What jolted her out of her silence was a challenge to the religious beliefs she had mostly—but not completely—given up by the time she got to college.
Active
Themes
Gifty interrupted the group’s laughter to ask how they knew that God didn’t exist. Anne, whom Gifty likes for being the smartest one in the group, jumped on her. She said it wasn’t just ridiculous but dangerous to believe in God, pointing to religious wars and anti-LGBT laws. Gifty replied that “Belief can be powerful and intimate and transformative,” too, not just evil. But Anne retorted that religion is the “opiate of the masses.” After a tense moment, Yao brought their attention back to the project. Gifty wasn’t yet sure how she felt about her own faith, but she was protective of her mother’s. And after this outburst, she spoke up more in class.
Active
Themes
