Themes: Illusions and Reality

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Even the narrator is the victim of her own illusions and mistaken projections. She finds that she must partially give up the romantic view of the City, presented early in the novel, as a place of ideal liberation where people are inspired to become “their stronger, riskier selves.” As the novel proceeds, the narrator must also consider the havoc that the City’s passions wreak in the characters’ lives, and she must admit that the old-fashioned values of Alice Manfred and the quiet domesticity embraced by Joe, Violet, and Felice at the end ultimately lead to a richer kind of happiness. Thus the narrator learns that the characters have outgrown the need for violence and that the shooting scene involving Joe, Violet, and Felice that she foreshadowed at the beginning of the novel no longer fits the way that the characters have evolved.

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Themes: Victimization and Survival

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Themes: Growth and Moral Stature

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