Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Voyage in the Dark, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Homesickness, Memory, and Belonging
Sexism, Love, and Power
Race and Identity
Money and Happiness
Summary
Analysis
Joe takes Anna and Laurie to a hotel, but the concierge won’t give them a single room, so they have to get two separate ones. They continue to drink together in one of the rooms. Anna gets so drunk that she feels the need to lie down, at which point Laurie says she should take off the dress, claiming that Anna will wrinkle it. She comes over to the bed and starts undoing the dress for Anna while Joe watches. Up close, Anna notices the many wrinkles in Laurie’s face, as well as the vast amount of makeup trying to hide those wrinkles.
The fact that Joe takes Anna and Laurie to a hotel aligns with the idea that Laurie is a sex worker and Joe is her client. This becomes even more evident when Laurie tries to take off Anna’s dress while Joe watches. Although the novel doesn’t necessarily cast negative judgment on sex workers, Anna notices Laurie’s wrinkled face and the makeup she has used to look younger, and this observation subtly hints that Anna senses a certain amount of hardship that Laurie has had to endure in her life. Although Laurie is very pretty and confident, Anna seems to recognize that her life—which could, it seems, easily become the life Anna herself might lead—is not so easy.
Themes
Anna says she feels sick, so she pulls the bedcovers over herself and closes her eyes. She then hears Laurie and Joe talking over by the fireplace. Joe asks how old Anna is, and Laurie claims she’s 17. But Joe doesn’t believe her, so she relents and admits that she’s 19, though she points out that 19 is still quite young. Doesn’t Joe like her? Joe says he thinks Anna is fine, but he really liked a different young woman Laurie introduced him to—a woman with dark skin. But Laurie says she hasn’t seen that woman since the evening they all spent together.
Joe and Laurie’s conversation aligns with the suggestion that Laurie is a sex worker. The fact that she lies about Anna’s age indicates that she wants to convince him to like her, as if she’s making some sort of sales pitch. What’s more, she has apparently set him up with other young women. It becomes evident, then, that Laurie didn’t invite Anna to dinner simply because she wanted to help her forget about Walter. Rather, she invited her for financial reasons.
Themes
Joe comes to the bed and touches Anna’s hand. She tells him her hands are always cold because she’s from the West Indies. He perks up when he hears this, claiming to know all of the islands in the West Indies. He also insists that he once knew Anna’s father, but Anna can tell he’s lying. She gets up from the bed and starts insulting both Joe and Laurie, demanding that Laurie give her back the dress so she can leave. But Laurie refuses to let her leave with the dress, since it belongs to her, so Anna goes across the hall to sleep in the second room, which is cold and depressing.
Joe’s interest in Anna’s West Indies upbringing suggests that he has fetishized Blackness or, at the very least, Caribbean culture—an idea that aligns with his previous comment to Laurie that he liked a dark-skinned young woman she introduced him to. In a way, then, both Joe and Anna have romanticized Blackness, though in different ways. Whereas Anna wants to be Black, Joe wants to have sex with Black women. Both desires fetishize and simplify Blackness.
Themes
After Anna drunkenly lies in bed for a while, Joe appears and apologizes for teasing her. He tries to kiss her, but she stops him, at which point he asks why she spends time with Laurie. “Don’t you know she’s a tart?” he asks. She tells him to go away and then starts to cry. Taking pity on her, Joe brings a heavier blanket and tucks her in before leaving. He’s gone by the next morning, but Laurie is still there. She and Anna make up as they go back to Laurie’s apartment, where they have breakfast and Laurie says that, though Anna’s behavior was misleading last night, she doesn’t care how she acts. She still likes Anna, even if it’s clear that Anna doesn’t know how to behave around people.
The word “tart” is a derogatory term for a sex worker, but it can also be used more broadly to refer to somebody who behaves in an overtly sexual way. As such, the fact that Joe calls Laurie a “tart” doesn’t necessarily confirm that she’s a sex worker, though it does make this possibility seem even more likely than it already did. Either way, both Laurie and Joe suggest that Anna has behaved somewhat hypocritically by entering into an obviously transactional relationship and then trying to back out at the last minute. In other words, they think Anna should have known that everyone expected her to have sex in exchange for some money and a nice dinner.
Themes
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