The Traveling Pants
The Traveling Pants represent the girls’ friendship and
the powerful, positive influence it has in all four girls’ lives.
The girls are all very different, with different personalities,
interests, worries, and family situations. The Pants, which fit
all four girls beautifully despite their very different body shapes,
demonstrate that the girls’ friendship is so strong that differences
don’t matter. In a way, their differences are what bond them, since
they care about each other so much as individuals. Just as the girls
support and inspire one another, the Pants help them to do things
they find difficult or unpleasant. By putting on the Pants, the
girls feel as though they’re surrounded by their friends, and this
feeling gives them the power to move forward, take risks, and do
what needs to be done. Each girl acts independently when she puts
on the Pants, but she gains courage by knowing that her friends
are behind her, if only in spirit. The Pants are like a physical
form of the strong friendship among the girls.
The Pants are important to the girls during this significant
summer. In previous summers, the girls spent all their time together, sharing
clothes, hanging out, and discussing every small detail of their
experiences. This summer, they’ll barely see one another at all. Having
never spent any significant amount of time apart, the girls depend
on the Pants to keep them connected. By agreeing to send the Pants
back and forth, they guarantee to one another that they’ll stay in
touch and constantly think about one another even as they spend the
summer on their own. However, the girls don’t really need the Pants
to stay close. The Pants help each girl feel as though the friends are
together, but their memories of their friends—and not the Pants—are
what really give them courage. When Carmen, Tibby, Lena, and Bridget
put on the Pants and imagine what their friends would say or how
their friends would act, they are drawing on the strength of their
friendship, not on any true power of the Pants. Even without the
Traveling Pants, the girls’ friendship would survive the physical
distance that divides them this summer, because the friendship is
so solid inside each of the girls themselves.
Mimi
Tibby’s pet guinea pig, Mimi, represents the fragility
of life and gives Tibby her first experience of death. Tibby has
had Mimi since she was seven years old, and sometimes she compares
herself to Mimi. Tibby envies Mimi when her own life is going badly,
wishing she could be all alone in a box and not have to face her
problems. When Tibby’s life is going well, she feels sorry for Mimi
for having to just sleep and eat all day instead of being part of
the world outside. Tibby loves Mimi, but she often takes her for
granted, assuming Mimi will always be there. When Bailey meets Mimi,
she helps Tibby to see Mimi in a new light. Tibby has been used
to no one taking any interest in Mimi, and Bailey helps Tibby appreciate
her all over again.
When Mimi dies, Tibby learns the importance of living
life to the fullest. At first, she denies the truth, and she puts
Mimi’s dead body in the freezer to avoid acknowledging that Mimi
is really gone. At the same time, Tibby avoids acknowledging how
sick Bailey is, preferring to just pretend that nothing is wrong.
Only when Tibby faces the difficult truth about Bailey, and eventually
goes to her funeral, does she understand how precious life is. Instead
of turning away from life and its inevitable conclusion—death—Tibby
embraces it. She buries Mimi near Bailey’s grave, wanting them to
be together. Instead of wishing she could hide from life, as Mimi
could in her box, Tibby decides to live as much as she can.
Tibby’s Film
Tibby’s film, a documentary of her summer at home, represents
the change in how Tibby sees the world. Tibby is disgusted that
she has to stay home in Bethesda, Maryland, while her friends go
elsewhere for the summer, and she is even more disgusted that she
has to spend her time working at Wallman’s. Expecting to hate everything
and everyone around her, Tibby decides to make a scathing documentary
of her life—a “suckumentary,” as she calls it. Tibby sees the world
through a sarcastic, biting lens that doesn’t allow any room for
compassion or understanding. She assumes everyone is ridiculous
and that she is better than they are. By making a film that makes fun
of those around her, Tibby shows how superior she feels. However,
Tibby’s film turns out much different than she expected. Because
Bailey helps Tibby look more closely at other people and see what’s
inside of them, Tibby finds it harder to make fun of people automatically.
Instead, she begins to see that people have difficult lives and
sad stories, and that they aren’t as worthless as she has once thought.
Instead of a comical, meanly funny film about ridiculous people,
Tibby’s film turns out to be a touching exploration of people whose
lives are very different from hers. Tibby has learned to see the
world in an entirely new way.
