46 pages • 1-hour read
Death Row
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Symbols & Motifs
Death Row
For much of the text, death row is the setting of the narrative, the place where Talia is awaiting execution for the murder of her husband. As the text progresses, however, it reveals that Talia is not, in fact, on death row, but has been “imprisoned” in a coma following a car accident. Death row is thus a symbol of Talia’s guilty conscience, a place she is unable to free herself from because she is trapped in a comatose state.
Early on in the text, Talia maintains her unequivocal innocence: “How could anyone think that I killed Noel? I had no motive—he was the love of my life. And most of all, I have an alibi. Yet here I am, about to be executed for his murder” (9-10). The idea that she is on death row for Noel’s murder is absurd to Talia, who states not only that she loved her husband but that she had an alibi for the night of his murder.
Through a series of dream-like flashback chapters, it becomes clear that Talia has obscured the whole truth from the reader, and that she did in fact set the stage for Noel’s death by explosion: “I turned on the gas in our house. I knew that Noel wouldn’t be able to smell it, and I gave him instructions to turn on the oven, expecting that the resulting blast would kill him” (58). This admission is an important turning point for Talia, who can no longer hide from the fact that her jealousy over Noel’s suspected infidelity inspired murderous rage in her.
The morning of Talia’s execution is the climactic moment in the text when reality begins to set in. For the first time, Talia takes ownership of her actions, admitting to herself (and to the reader) the truth of what happened: “It was a terrible thing to do. Even if he had been cheating on me—which he wasn’t—I should not have done it.” (58). She comes to partial consciousness in the coma only after she admits her guilt, which is enough to break her out of her mental prison, but not enough to bring her back to full consciousness.
The Epilogue creates even more ambiguity around events as the text suggests that the coma scene is also just a dream: Talia, nearly in a car accident, returns home to Noel, who is unharmed, after she has admitted her guilt and freed herself from her mental prison. There are clues, however, to indicate that this Epilogue takes place in an afterlife state, most clearly when the beeping that has plagued Talia for the duration of the text ceases and her throat no longer hurts—both indications that her life support has been turned off and she has been extubated.
Beeping
At various points in the text, there is a beeping sound that Talia can hear in the distance. The text explores various settings through different states of Talia’s mind, blurring the lines of reality for both Talia and the reader. A consistency among all these settings is the beeping sound, which has both literal and figurative functions within the text as a symbol of Talia’s tether to reality and The Fallibility of Perception.
The beeping sound first appears in Chapter 3, as Talia awakes from the first in a series of dreams she has about her life before prison: “There’s a distant beeping sound coming from somewhere within the prison that almost sounds like my alarm clock at home” (14). It is a subtle clue that Talia’s imprisonment may not be what it appears. In Chapter 17, it becomes clear that, in one version of reality, the beeping is the sound of a hospital monitor that tracks Talia’s vitals as she lies in a coma after a car accident. The “prison” she has been subjected to leading up to this moment is revealed as nothing but a figment of Talia’s guilty conscience as she lies unresponsive in a coma. The beeping, however, is real: “The beeping has also become much louder. It always sounds distant when I heard it in the past, but now it feels like the source is right in the room with me. Directly above my head” (64). The beeping becomes an anchor for Talia’s reality as she realizes what has happened to her.
The status of the beeping at the end of the text is as ambiguous as the ending itself, in which Talia sits with Noel on the porch, and he does not hear the beeping: “How is it possible he doesn’t hear that alarm? It’s so loud. Has he gone deaf? Because that’s the only way he wouldn’t hear that awful beeping. I’m about to comment as much when, quite abruptly, the beeping halts” (68). Noel’s inability to hear the beeping is one indication that Talia has, in fact, died, and that the Epilogue is nothing more than the last gasps of Talia’s consciousness as her body shuts down. However, due to the ambiguous nature of the Epilogue, it is left up to the reader’s interpretation whether Talia dies after the ventilator is shut off, or awakens from some kind of additional alternate reality and returns home to Noel.
Letting Go
The idea of “letting go” is a repeated phrase and motif throughout the text that supports the theme of The Psychological Impacts of Trauma and Betrayal, illustrating the lasting effects of a guilty conscience. While it turns out that she is not guilty of the crime for which she is to be executed, she is still guilty of a toxic jealousy that nearly drives her to murder. Talia’s guilty conscience is imprisoning her mentally on “death row” while her body remains in a comatose state.
After Talia’s multiple appeals fail, her lawyer encourages her to accept her death sentence rather than attempt another appeal: “Sometimes it’s better to let go than to drag it out” (24). While Talia, believing in her unequivocal innocence, wants to fight back against this, she ultimately realizes that she has little to return to in her life now that Noel is dead. Read metaphorically, Bowman’s insistence that she give up—“You’re doing the right thing […] I’ve seen this many times before, and you have to know when to let go” (24)—is Talia’s subconscious encouraging her to admit her culpability in nearly killing Noel, which is the key to “letting go” and freeing herself from this mental prison.
The idea of “letting go” takes on additional meaning when the novel reveals, following Talia’s “death” by lethal injection, that she has really been in a comatose state after being hit by a truck on her way home to save Noel. The characters are re-cast, with guard Rhea as her nurse and Bowan as a doctor who encourages Noel to make the decision to take Talia off life support: “I know it’s hard, but like I’ve said, you have to know when to let go” (64). No longer in prison, Talia is still trapped, unable to alert a sobbing Noel that she is still conscious.
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