For Whom the Belle Tolls
59 pages • 1-hour read
Jaysea LynnFor Whom the Belle Tolls
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Themes
Content Warning: This section includes discussion of child abuse (including child sexual abuse), death by suicide, and sexual abuse.
The Experience of Religious Trauma and Healing
In For Whom the Belle Tolls, both Lily and Sharkie arrive in the Afterlife still enduring the effects of past traumatic experiences within a religious community. While both characters are initially apprehensive about the Afterlife, they gradually confront their fears and find ways of moving forward. Through their arcs, the novel explores the experience of religious trauma and healing.
In her flashbacks and memories, Lily recalls how her Evangelical community was often a source of oppression and sexist double standards instead of providing spiritual nourishment and comfort. As Lily reflects, her church placed a heavy focus on policing the appearance and behavior of young girls and women: “The adults at her church had commented for as long as [Lily] could remember that her parents would have to watch her; Lily was so pretty—and a redhead!—that of course she was going to be trouble. ‘She’ll be a real temptress if you’re not careful’” (390, emphasis added). Lily faces further sexism after she is assaulted by her friend’s boyfriend: Instead of offering Lily support and justice, her youth leader blames Lily for the attack. Devasted, Lily cuts off contact with her church.
Sharkie’s experiences parallel Lily’s. When she arrives in the Afterlife, she is a very nervous child and insists that she belongs in Hell. Her life file reveals that she is also a survivor of sexual abuse, as her pastor was a predator, while her foster mother used religious teachings to terrify her into submission. Sharkie, like Lily, thus sees religion as a source of fear instead of something enjoyable or meaningful.
As both Lily and Sharkie bond and build their Afterlife, they gradually begin to heal from their religious trauma. Sharkie is happy to learn that Hell is not as she feared it would be, and that she can live in Lily’s personal Paradise and attend school, finally experiencing the stable childhood she was denied in mortal life. Lily, meanwhile, gradually confronts her complicated feelings about her past. In her early days in Hell, she feels sick at the sight of Heaven’s portal and is reluctant to open up to anyone about what she experienced. Eventually, she shares her life file with Bel and even confronts God towards the novel’s end. Her conversation with God helps her to find a sense of release and empowerment, while also changing her understanding of God and how others abuse faith for their own selfish ends.
By the novel’s close, both Lily and Sharkie have found peace in the Afterlife, including in matters of religion. Sharkie no longer fears Hell or sees herself as unlovable and wicked, while Lily realizes that her past does not define her and that she can experience religious beliefs on her own terms. As Sharkie and Lily’s character arcs demonstrate, while religious trauma has a large impact upon them, healing is possible.
The Importance of Self-Determination
At the beginning of the narrative, both Bel and Lily struggle with low self-esteem and doubts about where they belong. Due to their difficult past experiences, they feel a lack of agency. As the narrative progresses, however, they slowly build up their confidence and choose their own paths, reflecting the importance of self-determination.
When Lily first arrives in the Afterlife, she still feels the effects of her mortal experiences that have left her feeling unworthy and powerless. Her past sexual trauma has made her scared of intimacy and vulnerability, while her strict upbringing has always encouraged her to be a people-pleaser. As Lily settles into her Afterlife, however, she slowly begins to develop stronger self-esteem through making her own choices and considering what she truly wants. Her establishment of the Hellp Desk gives her a sense of purpose and competence, while her growing circle of friends helps her realize that she is capable of connecting genuinely with others. As she gets to know Bel and falls in love with him, she faces her fears of being unworthy of love. Instead of avoiding her feelings, she decides to commit to them, confessing her love for Bel. In taking these steps, Lily develops a greater sense of control over her existence and feels better about herself.
Bel also begins the narrative in a place of emotional insecurity and helplessness. While he is a competent general and enjoys a close circle of friends, he is still haunted by his father’s decision to enter the Void many years ago, and worries that he is unworthy of being the new prince in his father’s stead. He has also experienced heartbreak several times before, as his love interests usually choose reincarnation instead of remaining in the Afterlife with him. As he gets to know Lily, Bel also changes, just as she does: With her love and support, he confronts his dark memories and shares his vulnerabilities over his father’s death, which brings him the release he has long needed. His bravery during the war also helps build his sense of worthiness as a prince, which leads to him finally agreeing to wear his father’s old crown at the novel’s close. He also decides to embrace love again, despite the risks, in choosing to pursue a relationship with Lily.
Through these various acts of self-determination, Lily and Bel end their character arcs as far more confident and self-assured people. While they still face some challenges, such as Bel’s lingering trauma from the war, they are no longer afraid of emotional vulnerability and feel a sense of security in who they are. As they embark on their new life together, they look to the future with confidence instead of doubt or fear.
The Supportive Dynamics of a Chosen Family
Bel, Lily, and Sharkie all long for a sense of family as they navigate their existences in the Afterlife. While each character has had a difficult experience with some aspect of family life in the past, they gradually realize that families can take more than one shape. Through their growing love for one another, they discover the supportive dynamics of a chosen family.
Lily frequently wrestles with her regret that she never got the chance to be a mother during her mortal life. Her greatest motivation for considering reincarnation is the chance it offers of fulfilling that dream. Once Sharkie enters her life, however, Lily begins to experience motherhood in a new, unexpected way. While Sharkie is not her biological child, she becomes first Lily’s ward, and then eventually her official adoptive daughter. As Lily nurtures Sharkie and provides her with the safe, supportive environment she never knew before, Lily becomes the maternal figure she always dreamed of being. Thus, even before she learns about the possibility of deification and biological motherhood in the Afterlife, Lily embraces staying with Bel and Sharkie no matter what, because she realizes that she has already found the family she wanted.
Bel also faces decisions over family and new experiences of what family means throughout the narrative. While he enjoys the company of his large, loving biological family in Hell, he still feels the lack of a partner and children of his own. In falling in love with Lily, a mortal soul, Bel accepts the idea that love and family may not come to him by a conventional path. Although he knows that there is a chance Lily might leave him the way his past lovers did, he still chooses to try to build a relationship and family with her, declaring that their love is worth the risk and that nothing means more to him. In offering Sharkie his unconditional love, Bel gets to experience fatherhood in a way that is just as fulfilling and valid as biological fatherhood would be, thereby paralleling Lily’s experience of adoptive motherhood.
The novel thus suggests that chosen family can often be just as important, and just as integral to one’s life and identity, as blood ties. While Bel and Lily end the novel with the possibility of having children of their own, they are already content with their love and their experience raising Sharkie. For this reason, it is implied that any children they may have in future will simply expand the family they already have.
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