Major Themes
The book touches upon the emergence of HIV/AIDS, as well as the relationship between politics and homosexuality, its acceptance within the 1980s Conservative Party and mainstream society. The book also considers heterosexual hypocrisy regarding homosexual promiscuity. Finally, an underlying theme is the nature of beauty. Nick is attracted to physical beauty in art and in men. However, he pays a price for his choices: his beautiful lover Wani is a self-hating homosexual, and the Feddens' home (in which Nick Guest remains a guest) is filled with both exquisite art and vile hypocrisy.
Read more about this topic: The Line Of Beauty
Famous quotes containing the words major and/or themes:
“He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co- ordinate grid system laid over it. The instructor could point to different parts of her and say, “Give me the co-ordinates.”... The Major could see every unit in the Army using his idea.... Hot dog!”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)