Hi world! Chris here. Sorry this post is coming after two weeks of total silence, but I’ve actually been super sick with mono and that was beyond miserable so there was no way I was going to be up for writing a whole blog post. In fact, even thought I’m doing much better now, I still have limited energy so this post is something I wrote awhile ago and I’m just editing it now.

I took a Studies in the Novel class this semester that focused on the author Elizabeth Strout. I had never read anything from her before, but now I’ve read basically everything she’s ever written. Focusing on families and the realistic plot points of life, Strout’s books are pretty different from what I usually read. However, they were actually really good so if you like small town life filled with family drama, you should try her out.

Today we’ll be looking at her novel My Name is Lucy Barton just to give you a better idea of what you might be getting into if you’re interested in her work.

Strout’s Stunning Symbolism

As an award-winning author, Elizabeth Strout’s skills in using literary devices is truly no surprise. The simplest, but arguably the most effective, device comes from the symbolism she utilizes throughout her novel My Name is Lucy Barton. As the novel progresses through the ups and downs of the narrator’s story, so too do the objects and settings begin to change into subtle hints to what is really taking place in Lucy’s life.

The novel begins with the main character stuck “in a hospital for almost nine weeks” due to an infection after surgery (Strout 3). Hospitals can often appear in literature as symbols of pain or death as many people go because they are sick or injured and they do not all get the chance to leave in the manner they arrived. However, it is very unlikely Strout intended this particular meaning for the hospital when it is quickly followed by a description of Lucy’s view of “the Chrysler Building, with its geometric brilliance of lights” (Strout 3). This image of a tall and well-lit building is meant to symbolize hope and optimism as Lucy can look out her window, see the building and the street below, and imagine what her life will be like after she leaves the hospital. Because of this more positive symbol pressed close to the initial mention of the hospital, one can assume the hospital is meant to symbolize healing both physically and mentally which becomes more obvious as Lucy’s mother arrives in New York for the first time.

The relationship between Lucy and her mother is revealed almost immediately as Strout introduces yet another symbol that most people are very familiar with in present times. The telephone in Lucy’s hospital room is her only form of communication with the outside world. It symbolizes her ability to speak and be understood as well as her ability to hear from others and understand them in turn. Unfortunately for Lucy, whenever she has the chance to use this phone, her “mother would quietly rise from her chair and leave the room” as if to physically display how there is a lack of communication and understanding between herself and her daughter (Strout 8). Strout uses this to ease the reader into the revelation that there are clear divides in this family and even as an adult, Lucy is still dealing with them.

As the story continues, Lucy reveals what kind of trauma this has left her with through mentioning different symbols as they spring up in her different memories. The first of these being a tree that stood all alone “in the middle of the cornfields” (Strout 12). Lucy looks at this tree as her “friend” when she is a child because she has no real human friends (Strout 13). This also implies she feels that she shares something with this tree in its loneliness, as if she also feels that she is standing by herself in the middle of life.

After her family moves from a garage into a house, Lucy struggles with the temperature in winter. She admits that “always, I have hated being cold” which seems normal enough at first until one considers the deeper implications of this statement (Strout 23). In literature, winter and being cold are often used as interchangeable symbols for pain, loneliness, despair, and death. Given the aforementioned symbolism of the tree, it is safe to assume Strout wanted to include Lucy’s distaste for the cold to further reveal how lonely she feels around her family and how much it pains her to feel that way. However, it is not a feeling that comes without reason.

Farther in the novel, Lucy mentions how her parents used to lock her in her father’s old truck because they had no money to pay anyone to watch her when they were both working and her older siblings were in school. Lucy recounts these moments with terror as she remembers random details such as “saltine crackers with peanut butter” and “pounding on the glass” and “screaming” (Strout 58; 59). This notion of being stuck with limited supplies and no way to freedom feels very reminiscent of a prison. Perhaps Strout included this information about Lucy’s past to symbolize the way her family kept her trapped as a child and prevented her from living a better life. Or perhaps it is the small town and poverty the truck symbolizes as most rural farming towns, such as the kind Lucy grew up in, tend to be made up of all of these things.

However, the meaning of the truck begins to dull as Lucy recalls the time she was locked inside with a “really, really long brown snake” (Strout 67). Over time, the symbolic importance of snakes has changed from good to bad and back to good again many times over, leaving this scene up to interpretation depending on what the reader believes to be happening. In some cases, snakes are meant to represent transitioning and upcoming changes because they are animals that shed their skin in a way that almost rebirths them into the world. Given this idea, Lucy’s encounter with the brown snake could symbolize how different Lucy is from her family. She is the only one of them that seems to go through a transformation as she grows up and learns about the world and changes her opinions on life and her family. However, this is not the only option for what this scene could mean.

Due to the snake’s inclusion in Genesis as a subject of the Devil, there are also several negative meanings behind snakes in literature as well. They can symbolize danger, temptation, isolation, and deception. Lucy Barton admits to having a fear of snakes earlier in the novel which offers good reasoning into the fact that the inclusion of this snake should probably represent something bad. Because snakes are solitary animals and Lucy is afraid of them, it is fair to assume Lucy’s interaction with this snake symbolizes her fear of being on her own for the rest of her life.

Luckily for Lucy, this is not the case for her future. In fact, Strout includes several symbols to suggest that Lucy is not as alone as she believes she is throughout the novel. When her beloved doctor announces how “the scar is healing nicely” there is the option to use this line as a reference to another scar Lucy bears (Strout 56). Because this comes after her mother’s arrival at the hospital and after they have had more than one day to talk to each other, the scar that is healing nicely could in fact be the emotional scar left over from Lucy’s childhood. Perhaps the doctor’s comment is Strout’s way of hinting that there is hope for Lucy and her mother.

The same can be said for Lucy’s relationship with her father as well when she returns to her hometown after her mother falls ill. Lucy and her father hug at the hospital and she “imagined the warmth of his hand against the back of my head” (Strout 163). Because Lucy has already stated how much she hates the cold, it should be common knowledge that she loves the warmth. Her associations with warmth are some of her first associations with kindness as they came from the janitor at the school that let her stay late to stay warm and her father’s hands picking her up out of the truck when she was a child. Now, as an adult, she is associating warmth with her father again, symbolizing the kindness that is still between the two of them despite all of their differences.

This reconciliation between Lucy and her parents ends the novel on the same hopeful note the novel began on, bringing the story full circle in terms of what the symbols mean. The hope of the Chrysler Building allowed the hospital to be a place of healing for Lucy and her mother that helped her reconcile with all of her childhood memories and overcome that fear of being alone.

Citation

Strout, Elizabeth. My Name is Lucy Barton. Random House, 2016.

Thanks for reading and I hope this holiday season has and will be great for you (or that you at least aren’t suffering from mono). Come back next week for a fun Christmas themed post just in time for the holiday!

Until then, stay safe out there!