46 pages • 1-hour read
A Family Matter
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, and antigay bias.
The Freezer
In the first chapter, Heron learns that he has terminal cancer, then he goes to the supermarket, climbs into a waist-high chest freezer, and pulls the lid down over him. He looks at the ice that drips and shines on the inside walls, and he feels comfortable. He would have been happy to stay there had he not been found and pulled out by members of staff.
Heron’s immersion in the freezer symbolizes his desire to avoid change, to escape facing up to what is happening to him until his eventual death. He wants to freeze life as it is now. His unwillingness to accept change is echoed soon after when he cannot bring himself to tell his daughter about his illness. This also parallels how he was unable to change and accept Dawn’s lesbian identity, instead cutting Dawn entirely from his and Maggie’s lives.
Maggie has her own way of climbing into a metaphorical freezer. She finds it hard to confront her father about the events of the past, which would stir up old wounds and perhaps change the existing dynamic between them. She evades answering the questions her children have after she tells them their grandfather is ill and will die. “All of that is a way off,” she says (181). It is easier not to broach difficult subjects and to create a kind of mental freezer that prevents change.
Family Life
The small, everyday details of family life form a recurring motif that is most visible in the life of the adult Maggie. These constantly occurring things that Maggie takes great care over act as a counterpoint to the larger issues that come up, like illness, death, and other major changes. All this is part of the “life of the normal family” (43), and Maggie must do her part to “keep them all moving forward” (9). Even the small quarrels Maggie has with her adolescent son over trivial matters are “[j]ust family life, bustling and real” (24). Always, despite what else goes on, the little things remain; they are the glue that holds a family together.
Maggie’s husband Conor also plays his part and takes charge of tasks, but Maggie is the clear point of contact for domestic tasks. Much like her father, she sticks to her strict routine of daily tasks to cope with life, despite the major changes she’s facing. Appreciating her family’s life makes her feel satisfied, and maintaining their routine offers her a sense of control in the face of narrative conflict. Even though she grows bored at times—a fact that causes her and Conor to create date nights to make her feel more stimulated—she understands that her life is gratifying. Her family life thus represents how the minutiae of life should be appreciated, with a steady, unsurprising schedule being more valuable in some ways than a life full of change and disruption.
The Kiss
As they return home in Hazel’s car from their movie date, Dawn and Hazel exchange their first kiss. It symbolizes the beginning of something entirely new in Dawn’s life, igniting a desire and meeting a need that has been buried within her for many years. Just before the kiss, when she knows it may happen, she realizes that she must go through with it at all costs; otherwise, she can see “all her chances to be alive slipping past” (39). Within her character arc, it is the moment she becomes fully “alive” because she has not been able to be who she wants to be until now.
The kiss represents not only an irrevocable shift in the narrative—as this act marks the moment that Dawn gives into her feelings, which will result in her losing custody of Maggie—but also the realization of Dawn’s true self. After a lifetime spent making decisions solely because they were expected of her, a seemingly small act like a kiss reaffirms what she has always wanted and helps her realize that earnestly and authentically pursuing what she wants is the only way to feel fulfilled in life.
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