The Memory Keeper's Daughter: Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Powder-Blue Ford Fairlane

Caroline’s distinctive car appears at prominent plot developments. In the parking lot at the clinic when bringing the laboring Norah to deliver, David describes the car as conservative and practical and newer than his. Caroline has recently acquired it, and it reflects not only her personality but also her eye color. The Fairlane takes Caroline and Phoebe to and from the Home for the Feebleminded and then to Pittsburgh. Al Simpson remembers the car and uses it to find Caroline. Cars feature in the book as a means for escape, as when Norah does daily high-speed round trips to Louisville with her terrified son in the backseat and thirteen years later Paul steals a car for the same trip. However, the baby-like color of powder blue, along with the model “Fairlane” named for a beautiful route, evokes the image of safety and well-being, which is exactly what Caroline provides for the neglected Phoebe.

Photography

By design, cameras capture reality. They aid memory in the recall of precious and important moments in time. Their lenses facilitate sight with focus and framing, and they create artifacts to share with others. With all these benefits, cameras have the power to keep us from forgetting. For this reason, the grieving Norah, fearful of losing her connection to her daughter, gives David the “Memory Keeper” camera to start the dialogue about Phoebe that he is refusing to have. In the hands of David, however, the camera’s purpose becomes perverted. David uses the camera to manipulate reality through contorted compositions that dehumanize his subjects. He experiences important moments with his family through the viewfinder, the camera functioning as a barrier to create distance between himself and people. Rather than comfort Norah by a shared experience of grieving as she intended, David uses the Memory Keeper to create false memories of his daughter by photographing strangers as stand-ins for her imagined life.

Flowers

As the seed-bearing parts of plants, flowers attract pollinators to perpetuate the species. In the novel, flowers convey the image of fruition, regeneration, and connection. The characters give, receive, and cultivate particular flowers throughout the book. David gives Norah daffodils. Al brings Caroline lilacs, and Robert and Phoebe bring her roses. Frederic builds a greenhouse for orchids. Caroline and Phoebe plant chrysanthemums and tulips. Rosemary plants daylilies and flax. David’s parents plant jack-in-the-pulpit. Norah envisions her old age as a tender bud wrapped in the resilient calyx of the flower, protected and dependent, but in middle age she realizes she is destined to become the whole, self-sufficient plant. Ultimately, plants represent the growth and life determined to flourish in the middle of tragic decisions and grief.

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