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Chapter 44
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
Olivia King isn’t the first mother who has tried to take her own life after seeing her child taken away. Jean sends Sonia inside as the EMTs appear with the stretcher. Olivia’s left hand is charred, and her wrist is just exposed bone. There’s smoke coming from the Kings’ front door. Patrick comes outside to catch Jean before she falls. Inside, he pours her a drink and can barely bring himself to say that Olivia recorded “I’m sorry, Julia” on a Dictaphone, set it to repeat, and set it out of reach. Losing his composure, Patrick says that “[w]e’re doing everything we can. But when did it get so fucking bad?”
Here, Jean reveals that the Pure Movement is causing problems and even deaths, even among those who once supported it wholeheartedly. This suggests, first, that a mother’s love for her children trumps loyalty to a movement. Moreover, the fact that the Pure Movement continues to arrest women who break the rules further underscores the movement’s lack of care for women—the government neither cares about the women it arrests, nor the families who suffer when their female family members are taken away.
Themes
Hearing a sob in the living room, Jean finds Steven watching the ambulance drive away. With prodding, Steven says that when Julia’s shaming was shown on TV, the teacher told the boys that they had to watch out for girls like her, as they’d drag the boys to hell. The teacher told his students that it’s okay to use slurs and insults against people like Julia, and he had the boys shout slurs at the TV. Then, the teacher handed out a page full of slurs and asked students to write letters to Julia using as many as possible. Steven did it, but he notes that “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.” Jean nods.
