Breathing Lessons | Topics & Themes

Breathing Lessons Thematic Overview

The novel deals directly with one day in the life of Ira and Maggie Moran, the day they travel to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania, to attend the funeral of Maggie's best friend's husband and detour to visit Fiona and Leroy.

But in fact the novel covers their whole life together as each remembers the years they have known each other.

Once again, Tyler takes family as a major theme, this time focusing on marriage. Just as in earlier novels she exposed the idea of the perfect family as a myth, here she reveals that the perfect marriage is also an illusion.

In Breathing Lessons, Tyler gives readers a picture of a good marriage versus a perfect marriage. Maggie and Ira Moran have been married for twenty- eight years. Their marriage has lasted because they have somehow both tolerated and loved each other.

Though...
(read more)