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Chapter 51
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
As Katherine leaves, Gifty checks on her mother, still unmoving in the bed. She goes to the lab, where she cleans up her workspace. She has finished her research: she is as certain as she can be that she can make the mice refrain from seeking rewards by stimulating the right neural pathway. She delivered the light, and even the limping mouse stopped pushing the lever. She begins to write up her findings, which are dry and direct. They can’t capture her very human feelings of relief, or the sensation of holding a mouse’s life in her hands.
There is still reason for Gifty to believe that things—and people—can’t change. Her mother’s second depression seems to be following the first almost exactly. This consistency throws Gifty’s scientific breakthrough into sharp relief and offers a reminder that the whole point of her work is to change situations of depression and addiction that, up till now, had been considered hopelessly unchangeable. But even as she does this work she realizes that the science alone won’t ever capture her transcendent feeling of success.
Active
Themes
The laying on of hands was important in Gifty’s childhood church: when someone received prayer, it was administered through the hands of those nearest them. Everyone else reached out their hands across the distance. Gifty remembers the feeling of touch when she was saved and watching the limping mouse refuse the lever reminds her of the meaning of rebirth and redemption, of needing the outstretched hands of others and the grace of God.
Active
Themes
