Not To Be Reproduced Analysis

As Per Petterson switches between fifteen year old Trond and sixty seven year old Trond, the mental battle Trond is going through becomes more apparent as he rehashes the past and unpacks events that suggest he has actually led a very unlucky life. Petterson uses allusions to René Magritte’s painting, “Not to be Reproduced,” and the Swedish television show, “The Boy with the Golden Trousers,” to further reveal Trond’s struggle to reconcile with the past and his poor luck in life. René Magritte’s painting depicts a young to middle-aged man wearing a suit, not unlike Trond in the final chapter. The man looks into a mirror, but only sees the back of his head. The painting draws strong parallels to Trond in that both people are at a crossroads

When Trond dreams about being with his first wife when he was thirty, he thinks to himself, “What I was most afraid of in this world was to be the man in Magritte’s painting who looking at himself in the mirror sees only the back of his own head, again and again” (122). Although Trond wishes not to become like the man in the painting, it turns out that he does just that. Even at sixty seven, Trond is still looking back at his teenage years. He is still struggling with the knowledge that his father lived a double life, and that he could only ever see one side of him, similar to the man in the painting. The conflict with his father leaves Trond with an unstable identity which he often buries by saying that he has been lucky. Some of his unluckiest experiences include growing up poor in a split household, having an unfaithful father, losing his wife in a horrific car crash, and losing his sister to cancer. Trond cannot even

Petterson uses this as a contrast to Trond’s life. After he eats dinner with Lars, Trond reflects on his life saying, “I have seen so many things and been part of so much in my life although I will not go into details now, for I have been lucky too, I have been the boy with the golden trousers” (159). Petterson contrasts the boy in the television show, who has truly been lucky, with Trond. Trond actually grew up very poor. His father was always doing odd jobs and was unable to sufficiently provide for the family. In the final chapter when Trond’s mother comes out of the Warmlandsbank, she says to Trond, “But there was only 150 kromer. I don’t know, don’t you think that seems very little?” (234). It was very little, much less than it could have been if Trond’s father had been smarter about when he chose to send the logs down river. This emphasizes another parallel between the show and novel: in the show, the son is more responsible about money because he encourages donating it to help others. The father in the television show is similar to Trond’s father because of how irresponsible he is with the money and also how immoral he is knowing that the money coming out of those trousers has been disappearing from bank vaults. This allusion shines a light on Trond’s bad luck and economic situation as a child while emphasizing how