Previous
Chapter 13
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
Back in the present, once the men leave, Patrick paces. Jean notes that they won’t take off Sonia’s counter, and she asks Patrick to try to use his power as the president’s science advisor to try to get Sonia’s counter taken off. When he acts noncommittal, Jean slams a glass down. It shatters and cuts her hand. Washing the cut, Jean realizes she doesn’t trust Reverend Carl: he’s playing a game of some sort. As Patrick stitches the cut, Jean worries aloud that they’re going to somehow “promote worldwide evil” with her anti-aphasia serum. Frustrated, Patrick says it might’ve been better when Jean didn’t talk.
As someone who is suffering under a government policy she once thought would be impossible to implement, Jean doesn’t think she can give the government the benefit of the doubt anymore. Why would they stop at taking away American women’s voices when they could perhaps subjugate women at a global scale? Patrick’s response reads as utterly naïve, and it suggests the relative privilege his gender grants him. He also illustrates how even “good” men can come to buy into this oppressive system.
Themes
