Race
One of the poem's main themes is race. The speaker grapples with the divide between Thomas Jefferson's advocacy of freedom and his choice to own slaves. She disagrees with her father about how to weigh his historical legacy. Over time, she comes to think that his opinion on the subject might be related to the fact that he is the white father of a Black daughter, and might feel some historical connection to Jefferson. The speaker connects this to the idea that he might have thought, however abstractly, that he was responsible for making her better in some way. Trethewey uses the role of race in the poem to reveal how Jefferson's actions reflect, in a much smaller way, in her father's idea of who she is. Doing so creates a complex picture of how race informed their relationship, making them slightly distant from one another, in spite of his much more compassionate point of view.
Ideas and actions
One of the poem's other central themes is the space between actions and beliefs. Specifically, the speaker takes issue with the fact that Thomas Jefferson passionately advocated for freedom in his philosophical writings while participating in the institution of slavery. Worse yet, as she notes, he had an affair with one of his slaves and did not acknowledge the relationship or the children that it produced. Unlike her father, the speaker is not as impressed by what Jefferson claimed to believe. She finds that the gap between his "words and deeds" is too substantial, suggesting that he did not truly believe in the universal right to freedom.
History
History also features as a prominent theme in the poem. The poem starts by describing a famous portrait of Thomas Jefferson and also depicts a visit to his Virginia home, Monticello. Later in the poem, the speaker recounts the disagreements she used to have with her father about Jefferson's legacy and writing. Throughout the poem, she focuses on the way in which Jefferson is remembered and how his actions are filtered through the various historical depictions of him. The poem concludes with the speaker mocking a tour guide who invites them to imagine living in the past. It shows how many of these carefully curated images only hint at the complexity and contradictions of his true identity.
