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Themes
Identity Construction
Lee thinks that who she was before Ault—a good student from a middle-class family in Indiana—isn’t compatible with Ault, and she tries to become someone else. Who this other person is remains elusive to Lee and the reader. Lee’s identity construction contains many variables. She makes it seem like she’s not in charge of who she is: It’s up to the other Ault students to validate her persona.
At first, as Lee has no friends, she can’t build an identity. She admits, “I was exhausted all the time by both my vigilance and my wish to be inconspicuous” (25). She doesn’t want anyone to pay attention to her, as that would pressure her to be someone specific, and Lee feels like she could be anyone, from the thief to Gate’s girlfriend to Adam Rabinovitz. By the spring of her freshman year, Lee wishes she could be a “cocky high-school boy, so fucking sure of my place in the world” (110).
With boys, Lee seems more comfortable. At the mall, she has a pleasant time with Cross and her friends, and she isn’t shy about confronting her male targets in Assassin. Her dialogue with boys reveals aspects of her identity. She is witty and assertive, but this isn’t the kind of identity Lee wants to build. As a girl, she wants a passive identity. Lee states, “With so many girls, it just seemed to be about receiving, or not receiving, rather than trying” (464). Instead of trying to be someone, she waits around for someone else (Cross) to validate her existence. Lee says, “Cross Sugarman came back to me in the fifth week of our senior year” (405). She couldn’t get Cross: She has to wait for Cross to get her.
Lee also reveals her identity around Martha and, intermittently, her parents. She can be the same kind of person around them as she is around boys—silly and quirky. The irony of the theme is that Lee doesn’t need to build an identity—she has one—but she feels like she has to be someone else to please Ault. The school requires a new person: an “Ault self” (251).
Lee isn’t the only character to struggle with identity construction. Rather than build an identity of her own, Dede copies Aspeth’s identity. Aspeth, though she’s the queen of the school, also plays with identity when she suggests that Lee shave her head. Presumably, Sin-Jun tries to kill herself because she doesn’t think she can construct a sustainable identity as a lesbian student at Ault. Having more than one character struggle with identity adds realism as it explores multiple means by which young people question who they are and who they want as they define themselves during their teenage years.
Girls versus Boys
The theme of Identity Construction unites with the theme of girls versus boys, as gender plays a big role in how the characters—or how they think they’re supposed to act. The book was published in 2005, and views of gender and sexuality were far more narrow than they are today. At Ault, and in Lee’s mind, gender is often rigid and binary. There are girls and boys, and Ault reinforces the firm line with separate dorms for two genders and the “drag dance,” which stirs excitement by subverting the constructed gender binary. Lee admits, “The thought of a boy wearing my bra over his T-shirt was horrifying” (32). This comment seems more related to her own insecurities than to concerns over gender roles.
Conversely, Lee’s identity subverts the binary. Lee is a girl, yet she often appears more comfortable around boys. At the diner, Lee has a generally pleasant exchange with Cross. She jokes about him being a “meathead,” and he kids her about being a spy. She doesn’t like the movie but has fun at the arcade and eating pizza with Cross and his friends. Lee admits she prefers the company of boys. When she gives boys haircuts in their dorms, she wants them to stick around. She explains:
[T]he way these boys were, their bluntness, their pleasure in physical acts like wrestling and burping, the way everything was too noisy and disorderly to ever feel awkward—this all seemed perhaps preferable to, truer and more lively than, the way that girls were. At least it seemed preferable to the way I was, trying to look pretty, trying to seem smart, when wasn’t I just as full of disgusting urges as any boy (218).
Lee thinks boys can be bawdy and visceral, while girls in the elite boarding school context have to be more traditionally beautiful and focused on making themselves appealing to boys. This rigid system of gender and social roles compounds her inflexible idea of an Ault self and causes Lee anguish.
Money and Visibility
Money permeates the story and becomes a central theme as Lee grapples with how wealth and the lack of wealth are on display or kept hidden. Lee states, “Money was everywhere on campus, but it was usually invisible” (21). People with money don’t need to display it. Their transactions happen discreetly, with the school billing the parents for items like books or services like laundry. Monetary transactions can also occur carelessly, making it seem like money isn’t worthy of attention. At the diner, Lee tries to pretend she has money by not asking for change or taking Cross’s dollar bills. Cross reinforces the undetectable aspect of money by paying for the cab fare without notifying Lee.
The money that creates Ault is always visible: It’s a part of the appearance—“the perfectly rectangular fields” and “the Gothic cathedral […] with its stained glass windows” (27) are a product of its vast financial resources. The bedspreads also visualize money. Little knows Lee is a scholarship student because her bedspread doesn’t have flowers. To conceal her lack of wealth, Lee asks her parents to buy her a flowery bedspread for her freshman-year birthday. Pictures can also reveal wealth. Lee’s parents identify Martha’s affluence through the photo of Lee at Martha’s swimming pool.
Diction can give away a person’s socioeconomic position. Terry’s homely/bawdy dialogue and Dave Bardo’s use of the word “ain’t” (318) mark them as regular, working-class people. Conchita’s use of the formal word “promiscuous” (150) hints that she’s rich and not a scholarship student. The Ault student body as a whole maintains separate idioms and terms—“therein lies the paradox” (153), “patina,” “spring-cleaning”—that have meanings that remain hidden from outsiders. Saying them shows that they belong at Ault and its elite environment.
Lee’s lack of money is another stressor in an already stressful environment, exerting pressure on her to fit in among a mostly wealthy student population. She hesitates to accept money for cutting hair, even though the extra money would be helpful. Lee is uncomfortable with how the lack of money creates embarrassing visibility, making her parents stand out among the wealthy Ault parents. The “dusty Datsun” and the “empty Burger King bag” expose the middle-class status of Lee’s parents, even though the affluent also eat fast food. She directs her father to park in a faraway spot so his car won’t be seen, and she tries not to reveal that her parents are staying at the Travelodge. For a young woman struggling with Identity Construction, being middle class in a world of wealth presents another challenge—at least in Lee’s mind—in determining who and how to be at Ault and in the world at large.
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