For Whom the Belle Tolls

“[Lily had] been told countless times that getting tattoos was like putting a bumper sticker on a Bentley, and each time, she’d laughed them off and joked that she was a Corolla at best.”

In this passage, Lily’s self-deprecation reveals deep insecurities about her own self-worth. By using the expression “Corolla at best,” she undercuts the value of the previous comparison made about her to a Bentley, thus minimizing herself and implying how little care and respect Lily gives herself.

“[Lily] wasn’t built to break, no matter how much she wanted to, and she silently and half-heartedly cursed that […] part of her that wouldn’t—couldn’t—let her be that vulnerable, even alone.”

This quote reveals Lily’s complicated perspective on strength. Though she evidently values her resilience as a survival mechanism, it hinders her ability to feel the depth of her own emotions. Her desire to “break” speaks to an implied, long-standing need to abstain from her own strength, yet such is the ingrained nature of endurance that she doesn’t permit herself the release.

“The silence under her [Lily’s] palm was just another reminder of the fight she’d lost, of her failure.”

Here, “silence” emphasizes Lily’s lack of mortal life, and, specifically, the life she’d worked so hard to survive and endure while still alive. Her qualification of this silence as being tied to “failure” is indicative of her internal struggles with guilt and responsibility, which will drive her experience of The Importance of Self-Determination throughout her arc.