What are the motifs in Under My Skin by Doris Lessing?

War seems to be a motif in the book. Doris Lessing's parents are brought together because of the First World War. Maude loses the man she loves when he is killed in a shipwreck, and Alfred is in the hospital because of the injuries he receives in battle. It is Lessing's opinion that the world war affected everyone on earth, through the battles themselves, the result of losing loved ones, or the damage to those who survived. Lessing says the wars, both the first and second, caused people who had never met or would have any reason to meet, to collide with others of a variety of socio-economic levels. She believes this was the reason for the pandemic of the Spanish influenza, and then a deeper plague of ideology and beliefs.