52 pages • 1-hour read
A Photo Finish
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Symbols & Motifs
Cole’s Messages
After Cole and Violet end their online relationship in the wake of their one-sided video sex, Cole continues to send Violet daily messages about his thoughts and feelings. In the narrative present timeline, Violet discovers these messages on Cole’s computer when she hikes down to retrieve his backup prosthesis. While Violet notes that Cole’s commitment to communicating with her is touching, she’s struck more intensely by frustration that this isn’t true communication. Instead, he has been using the chat, which he knows she doesn’t read, as a kind of workaround that lets him avoid being honest with her. The messages therefore represent the novel’s thematic development of The Merit of Progress Over Perfection in Mental Healthcare.
Despite Violet’s frustration, however, the messages aren’t meaningless to Cole; instead, they’re a tool that helps him articulate his feelings and gain comfort in communicating them to another person. Sending the messages, which become more emotionally revelatory over time, helps him learn to feel safe while being vulnerable. Nevertheless, sending the messages isn’t an endpoint for Cole’s emotional development, and Violet pushes him to continue this progress in person, since he needs to admit his feelings to her face in order to establish an open, authentic relationship with the woman he loves.
Cole’s Leg
For much of A Photo Finish, Cole doesn’t explicitly refer to his amputated leg, even within his internal monologue. This repression of thoughts about his injury and prosthesis indicates the depth of his shame about it, which his ex-fiancée, Hilary, severely exacerbated by the cruel way she spoke to him about how his leg affected his sexual performance and thus his identity as a man. Though Cole has lived with a prosthesis for years by the novel’s main narrative timeline, he has hidden his injury from nearly everyone around him, including his brother, Vaughn. The novel presents Cole’s sense that he can’t have a healthy, balanced romantic relationship as linking more deeply to his emotions about his physical disability than to his concerns about his ongoing mental health struggles.
When Cole’s prosthetic leg fails while he’s hiking with Violet, the incident is a turning point for him. The damage to the prosthesis makes it impossible for him to hide the amputation, as he has been doing for years. Violet’s lack of pity regarding his injury helps alleviate some of the pain that Hilary’s words inflicted. In addition, he’s extremely relieved to no longer have to keep his amputation a secret, which has weighed heavily on him for years. Emboldened by Violet’s matter-of-fact acceptance of his injury, Cole tells Billie the truth too. Her acceptance—and her revelation that she already suspected that he had a prosthetic leg because of his movements—furthers his self-confidence, which helps him open up to Vaughn. This honesty enhances Cole’s ongoing work toward improving his mental health.
Pipsqueak
Billie gives the horse named Pipsqueak, or Pippy (as Violet affectionately nicknames her), to Violet to train while she recovers from a fractured leg. Pipsqueak was born premature, so her owners feared that she would never be a successful racehorse. Despite these origins, Pippy becomes an enormously determined, successful racehorse, which shocks Violet, given the horse’s extremely sweet temperament. Pipsqueak therefore parallels Violet herself, since Violet lost her mother in childbirth and, like Pipsqueak, is sweet and demure, which others often mistake as meaning that she’s incapable or weak. Both the horse and the woman prove their detractors wrong, showing that they can be fierce competitors despite their size, gender, and natural temperament.
Pipsqueak’s sweet nature leads her to become a valuable source of comfort for Cole, who comes to recognize the emotional value of working with animals, thematically supporting Therapeutic Relationships With Animals. The horse’s ability to draw Cole out of his shell highlights how she’s like Violet, whose perennially cheerful nature similarly helps him through his struggles with self-worth. Caring for Pipsqueak helps Cole overcome some of his anxiety about his father’s death in a horse race, which helps him along his journey of improving his mental health. Though Cole never feels comfortable enough to ride a horse as spirited as Pipsqueak, he comes to care for the horse enormously. Pipsqueak thus powerfully symbolizes overcoming obstacles.
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