Racial Segregation
The main theme in the novel is the racial segregation that took place in the 1950s in South America. The narrator and writer of the novel was a white man living in that society who was against racism and who tried to change society. John analyzed the way racial segregation affects both the whites and the blacks and how it changed the way one group thinks about the other. Because he was able to live for a short period of time as a black man, he had a deeper understanding of what it meant to live as a person of color in the middle of the 20th century and how the members within a community interact with one another. John tries to understand both races and is not quick to blame the general society for all the bad things happening then. Instead, he goes deeper and reaches the conclusion that racism is not born but thought and the state and the people who have power are to be blamed for the extreme racial views.
Identity
Another major theme in the novel is identity, namely how a person builds his or her identity and how they connect with the world around them based on how they define their identity. There is a significant connection between a person’s skin color and their identity, and when John changes his skin color, he feels as if he doesn’t know who he is anymore and he even feels that he can’t contact his family anymore because of his skin color. The theme of identity is important in the novel because apart from dealing with racial issues, it also analyzes how a person changes when he loses the thing he used to relate to the world around him.
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is another theme in the novel. The group that is described as being hypocritical is the white one. The whites simultaneously try to keep the black separated from them and at the same time they profit from their cheap labor. Their hypocrisy is evident in the scene where a group of white men are nice towards a group of black men just because they wanted to know where they can find cheap black prostitutes. In other instances, white men are nice towards blacks only because they wanted to satisfy their curiosity regarding their sexuality and habits.
