Life After Life

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Parts 1-15

Parts 16-20

Parts 21-24

Parts 25-30

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Foxes

Sylvie names their home Fox Corner when she spots a vixen who has young kits, and the image represents Sylvie’s motherhood, what she believes is her destiny. Foxes often reappear as a symbol of predatory forces, for instance when they prey on the baby rabbits that Pamela and Ursula try to raise. More importantly, the foxes represent the family themselves—the Old English word “todde” meant a fox, so the link is in the name itself. Foxes symbolize not just Fox Corner but the life that the Todds are, in their various ways, fighting to protect. In one timeline, Sylvie feeds the fox, indicating her desire to nurture. In another timeline, Maurice shoots the fox, foreshadowing the feelings of attack that arise for Ursula when memories and premonitions from her past lives overwhelm her. This experience leads her to panic and think of herself as a fox without a hole (505), a natural creature with no escape from what surrounds her.

The Snow

The snow is used in the book to mark Ursula’s new beginnings, providing a dramatic anchor for the plot, but the snow also signifies the freshness and innocence of each advent. The snow, like the cord around her neck, might stand for natural forces that work against human wishes, but it also becomes a soothing image. The snow blankets and isolates, for instance, trapping the midwife in a nearby town, but it also lends an otherworldly quality to mundane moments, as when Sylvie thinks George Glover looks mythical and godlike riding his Shire horse through the snow. Ursula associates snow with safety and peace; at one point, approaching death, she thinks, “But here [is] the snow again, white and welcoming, the light like a sharp sword piercing through the heavy curtains” (477). The image of bright light counters the darkness that falls with each death, while the seasonal repetition mirrors the recursive nature of Ursula’s life. The gray ash in the rubble of war-time bombings is a different version of snow, indicating innocence defiled by evil.

The Cigarette Case

The gold cigarette case engraved with his initial belongs to Crighton, Ursula’s married lover who was in the Admiralty. It was given to him by his father after the engagement at Jutland, an important naval battle that took place between the British Royal Navy and the German Imperial Fleet in 1916 off the coast of Jutland, a peninsula in northern Denmark. In this way, the case is a memento of war, a reminder of the lessons and legacy of the Great War that will be reconfigured in the Second. The way the case moves about, at one point ending up with Renee Miller, demonstrates how the different timelines present different circumstances in Ursula’s life. It is a valuable keepsake that shows the power of affective connections and memory, just as Lavinia Nesbit’s brooch of the cat with the rhinestone eye represents the unpredictable, undiscriminating power of destruction and death, and the tiny, hardened remnants that survive.