69 pages • 2 hours read
Rebecca MakkaiThe Great Believers
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Search for Home
In keeping with The Great Believers’ interest in chosen family, Yale spends much of the novel seeking a symbol of family, safety, and connection to space: home. On the night after Nico’s funeral, Yale fixates on a house he admires in his neighborhood, musing that if he memorizes the real estate agent’s number, this won’t “just be the night they didn’t go to Nico’s funeral, the night Yale felt so horrifically alone; it would be the night he found their house” (21). He imagines buying the house with Charlie and spending time in the house with his chosen family of friends. For Yale, this house symbolizes an escape from the despair and aloneness he feels around Nico’s death. This house is a safe space where he can protect his chosen family, where he won’t feel “so horrifically alone.”
When Yale breaks up with Charlie—and fears that he has been infected with AIDS—his deepest fear is dying without the support of his chosen family around him. Yale’s search for a safe living space—moving from Terrence’s apartment to Richard’s friends hotel to Cecily’s apartment to the Sharps’s apartment—simultaneously embodies his deep sense of homelessness and wide-spanning friend network. Near the end of the novel, however, Yale seems to re-commune with his sense of home, sitting beside Charlie in the hospital where he himself will die of AIDS. Yale recognizes the hospital not only as his final, shared home with Charlie, but a symbolic space he shares with infected men everywhere.
After accepting the hospital as his final home—and thus coming to terms with his own death—Yale’s perception of the house in his former neighborhood comes full circle. In a poignant moment of letting go, Yale faces the house, closes his eyes, and imagines a different future. Though this moment can be read several ways, it is ultimately Yale’s good-bye to his chosen family, to the fantasies of home surrounding them.
Likewise, Fiona feels a sense of homelessness within the city of Chicago when her chosen family of gay men dies from AIDS. She feels that her current friend group doesn’t understand “that this city [is] a graveyard” (184), that her chosen family has died, and spaces she once cherished have been replaced by new buildings. By going to Paris to look for Claire, Fiona not only reconnects with her daughter but with the deeper familial legacy she shares with Nora. It is telling, therefore, that when Cecily asks Fiona how she might repair her feelings of homelessness, Fiona begins to think about moving to Paris (building a new home with Claire and Nicolette).
Left-Behind Objects
In The Great Believers, the objects left behind by AIDS victims assume a totemic significance. Objects embody the life essence of the person they belonged to. After Nico dies, Yale feels connected to him when he wears the shoes he used to own. Likewise, Yale feels reconnected to Nico when he finds his orange scarf (which Charlie wore up until his own death).
The novel also offers several objective correlatives that illustrate Yale’s processing of his friends’ lives, deaths, and continuing legacies. When Julian leaves for Puerto Rico (presuming he will go there to die), Yale keeps a box of his dental floss. Each day Yale tears off a strip of floss and imagines it as a day of Julian’s life. By the time he has finished the box of floss, he has symbolically resigned himself to Julian’s death. Conversely, Roscoe the cat becomes a signifier for the ways the legacies of cherished friends can live on after their deaths. Because Roscoe is passed down from Nico to Terrence to Cecily, he symbolically absorbs the memory and physical essence of all these people. Thus, when Yale strokes Roscoe’s fur just before he dies, he is symbolically communing with his friends through physical touch.
Fiona’s chosen profession—running a second-hand store—is also significantly steeped in the value of left-behind objects. Her store can be read as a kind of tribute to the significant objects of her brother and her friends who passed away from AIDS. Her store also pays tribute to their legacies in a literal, material sense (by donating funds to the Howard Brown Foundation for LGBTQ+ healthcare).
Art as Memorial
Throughout The Great Believers, works of art are created, preserved, and elevated as cherished memorials of loved ones who are no longer there. For Nora, her art collection is a testament to the legacies of artists from the Lost Generation of World War I. She specifically donates her collection to the Brigg through Yale because she knows that he understands its significance to her (as a member of his own Lost Generation). Furthermore, by prominently featuring Ranko Novak’s work alongside the work of well-known artists from this generation, Nora helps to ensure Ranko’s name will not be lost to time. As Nora explains, she is “the primary keeper of his memory,” and to let go of that memory would be “a kind of murder” (312).
The novel closes with two gallery shows back-to-back: Nora’s gallery show at the Brigg (in 1993) and Richard Campo’s gallery show (in Paris in 2015). These back-to-back gallery shows illustrate the ways in which they both preserve cherished memories, celebrating the essence of their no-longer-present subjects. The novel also significantly begins and ends with Richard Campo’s images of Nico and his friends (the first images appearing in a slideshow at Nico’s life celebration, the second appearing in a video on loop at Richard’s 2015 gallery show). The video on loop—showcasing footage of young Nico, Terrence, Yale, Charlie, Julian, and Teddy—repeats over and over again, suggesting a kind of eternal return or eternal repeating continuity of life. Thus, these images—and the memories they embody—come full circle. Fiona is able to heal and grow from her survivor’s guilt because she understands that the memories and stories these images embody will live on.
