Sarah's Key

Some of the major theme's uncovered in the novel Sarah's Key are knowledge vs. ignorance and secracy. Knowledge vs. Ignorance is a crucial theme throughout the book in not only Sarah's case but Julia's as well. For example, on page 40 Sarah comes to a realization that maybe things would have been easier to cope with if she just knew about the problems associated with Jews:

"As she looked at Eva and her mother, the girl wondered if her parents had been right to protect her from everything, if they had been right to keep disturbing, bad news away from her. If they had been right not to explain why so many things had changed for them since the beginning of the war. Like when Eva's husband never came back last year. He had disappeared. Where? Nobody would tell her. Nobody would explain. She hated being treated like a baby. She hated the voices being lowered when she entered the room. If they had told her, if they had told her everything they knew, wouldn't that have made today easier?"

This quotation also, connects with secracy. The parents chose to hide the information about the war and what was going on to protect Sarah's innoncence, and not get her involved with grown-up troubles. This is just the beginning to a book filled with "key" secrets and "key" events.