Previous
Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Vox, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Action, Complacency, and Resistance
Language, Communication, and Power
Children, Indoctrination, and Acclimatization
Control, Religion, and Gender Essentialism
Choice and Personal Fulfillment
Summary
Analysis
Jean wouldn’t believe anyone who told her that in a week’s time, she’d unseat the president, the Pure Movement, and Morgan LeBron. But she wouldn’t argue, as she, her six-year-old daughter Sonia, and all women wear word counters on their wrists. Jean’s husband, Patrick, and their sons, Steven, Leo, and Sam do not. Over dinner, Patrick asks Sonia yes or no questions about what she learned in school today. Sam and Leo ask her open-ended questions about school, which she can’t answer. With only five words left for the day, Jean can’t tell her sons herself that girls only listen to their teachers now, all of whom are male.
After initially offering readers hope that everything will turn out okay by the novel’s end, Vox plunges readers right into Jean’s nightmare. In the novel’s present, Jean isn’t able to effectively parent her children because of her counter, which severely limits her ability to speak. While Jean seems angry and frustrated about this restriction, six-year-old Sonia seems resigned—an early suggestion that children are, in this case unfortunately, very able to adapt to new situations.
Themes
Patrick asks Jean, a cognitive linguist, if Sonia is learning, but Jean just shrugs. By age six Sonia should be very verbal, but girls no longer learn reading and writing in school. They learn some math and mostly home economics, but girls don’t need voices to learn how to run a household and be “dutiful wi[ves]” one day. Annoyed, Jean snaps that she’s not a cognitive linguist anymore and scoops Sonia up to put her to bed. Jean’s last word of the day is “goodnight” to Sonia. She hums a bedtime song while Patrick watches from the doorway, looking dejected.
Themes
