Waves
In The Year of Magical Thinking, waves
symbolize both the ebb and flow of the emotions associated with
grief as well as the state of constant change that forces us to
constantly adapt and improvise in our lives and relationships. Didion
analyzes the psychological phenomenon of waves of grief, in which
a rapidly shifting experience of intense emotion and detached denial
causes a grieving person to experience their feelings in unpredictable,
intense bursts. Didion also draws on the image of waves in the final
moment of the memoir, in which she and John must ride waves to escape
to the secluded comfort of a cave. In this instance, waves symbolize
the necessity of working within given circumstances to make the
most out of unsatisfactory or challenging situations.
Flowers
Flowers are a common literary symbol, representative of
both the brevity of life and the fleeting nature of beauty. Didion
draws on this established tradition, and in the memoir, leis (garlands
of plumeria flowers) symbolize life as well as death. Both Quintana
and Didion wore leis at their weddings, the beginnings of their
new lives with their husbands. But Didion also places leis on the
tomb of her husband and her mother. The image of flowers being crushed
and destroyed in water also appears several times throughout the
book. Didion clogs her pool filter in Brentwood with gardenias and
later recalls the tradition in which visitors departing from Hawaii
toss flowers into water as a promise that they will return, and
how her flowers were destroyed in the wake of a boat. In both examples,
she attempts to use flowers for a reverent ritual, only to end up
destroying their desired symbolic value.
Eyes
For Didion, John’s eyes represent both his vitality and
his soul, and in the immediate aftermath of his death she fixates
on images of eyes. When she first sees his dead body, she remembers
the line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which
a character is told that the eyes of his father, drowned at sea,
have turned into pearls. When the hospital calls to request for
organ donation, Didion realizes that, because John was not on life
support, only his eyes would be viable for donation, and she becomes
upset that the hospital would take them away. The thought of his
eyes summons up the memory of a poem by E. E. Cummings about “Mr.
Death” and a “blue-eyed boy,” sending Didion on an unsuccessful
search for the poem in her home library. As Didion tries to cope
with the loss of her husband’s physical presence, she fixates on
his eyes as a symbol of his continued vitality.
