Variations on the phrase “I did not see…” support the novel’s theme of Awareness of Privilege, particularly the theme’s associations with Bernard Doyle and Teddy’s obliviousness about Kenya and Tennessee’s underprivileged lives. This motif initially appears in Chapter 3 following the car accident and is first associated with the man who hits Tennessee with his SUV: “Over and over again, he said, ‘I didn’t see her. I didn’t see her’ […] the one who Did Not See Her, just stood there repeating the only sentence he knew” (42). This motif signals a character’s unawareness of something, particularly something that they could and should have noticed but do not until it suddenly confronts or challenges them. As the story unfolds, the stranger’s phrase recurs and develops the theme of Awareness of Privilege through Doyle and Teddy. Ann Patchett uses this motif to illuminate the initial shock and subsequently uncomfortable steps that characters experience as they become more aware of their privilege.

Doyle says that he was “in a state of complete oblivion to their [Kenya and Tennessee’s] presence” in the Cathedral project near his wealthy neighborhood: “They could have brushed past him in the aisles of the grocery store or stood beside him on the train and it never would have mattered,” because he would not have seen them (179).