Food
Food appears consistently throughout the novel, most often
to denote the absence or presence of love, comfort, and stability.
Ellen feels deep shame at having refused to take a meal with Starletta
and her parents merely because they are black. This absence of meal sharing
indicates an absence of intimacy based on skin color differences,
which, Ellen later learns, are unimportant and an ignorant reason
for refusing a meal. Interestingly, the remedy for this foolishness,
after Ellen realizes her folly, is an offer to lick the lip of Starletta’s
cup if that is what it takes to prove that she loves her. Eating, even
in its simplest forms, runs alongside the Ellen’s development from
a precocious innocent to an understanding young woman.
When Ellen is living with her father, she must buy her
own food and, as she can afford very little, must subsist only on
frozen dinners, which she eats alone. Ellen must also take her meals
alone or in silence while she is at her grandmother’s house and
later at Nadine and Dora’s house, as well. While living with Julia
and, eventually, her new mama, Ellen is grateful for the abundance
of food—and love—that she receives. At both homes, the only happy
ones Ellen ever knows, food becomes a social event. At Julia’s,
they work in the organic garden together, and, at her new mama’s,
all of the children gather in the kitchen to cook enormous, delicious
feasts.
Death
Beginning with her mother’s suicide, Ellen is surrounded
by death and the thought of it throughout the novel. Soon after
her mother’s untimely death, Ellen’s father dies of an alcohol-induced
aneurysm. While he was alive, Ellen often had thoughts of murdering
him and had fantasized about how and when she would kill him. Her
grandmother, however, accuses Ellen of killing her mother and tells
her that she is just like her father, which, for Ellen, serves as
the ultimate insult. On the day that her grandmother picks her up
to take her to her house for the first time, Ellen notes that her
car is exactly like the undertaker’s car, except it is a different
color. This observation foreshadows Ellen’s nightmarish stay with
her grandmother, as it feels very much like a death sentence. Eventually,
Ellen’s grandmother falls very ill and dies. Ellen feels terribly
guilty for her mother’s death, as she feels she is somehow at fault,
and Ellen does not want to take on yet more blame for the death
of her grandmother. Ellen is clearly afraid of death and cannot
bear to look at her mother’s dead body during the funeral service
and burial. The abundance of death-related thoughts and events in
Ellen Foster serves to accentuate Ellen’s grief and misery in her
nightmarish situation and also underlines her feelings of solitude,
as she is continually neglected by those who are meant to love her.
God and the Afterlife
Ellen is continually praying to her “Lord” for support
and advice and makes many references to God and the afterlife throughout
the course of the novel. When God created her father, Ellen thinks,
he must have made an enormous mistake. Ellen cannot understand how
God could put a man like her father onto the earth. After her grandmother’s
death, Ellen surrounds her grandmother’s body with fake flowers
so that she might “trick” God into welcoming her into heaven. She
has a distinct vision of the afterlife and is disturbed when she
thinks that her grandmother and father will be in the same heaven
as her mother and sweet, newborn babies.
