54 pages • 1-hour read
Half His Age
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes themes of sex and emotional abuse.
Sticky Notes
Sticky notes are an important symbol for The Impact of Loneliness and Longing on Coming of Age in the novel. Waldo returns home to an empty house most days, but her mother usually leaves her a sticky note on the fridge explaining that she won’t be home and identifying the food in the freezer she can eat. For years, Waldo has kept these sticky notes in a jewelry box in her bedroom. The notes are brief and predictable, with easy endearments that Waldo knows make her mother feel as if she is doing something personal and loving.
Waldo holds onto the notes because she is so starved for attention and love. She eventually grows frustrated with herself for retaining the notes, but the habit reveals the significance of her loneliness and longing. This is as much as her mother is willing to give her, and so Waldo clings to these insufficient semblances of affection. In the scene where she returns home one day and throws out the note instead of saving it, Waldo is trying to discard her longing for companionship and connection.
Clothing
The narrative is saturated with repeated images of clothing. This motif illustrates the novel’s theme of Consumerism as an Emotional Placeholder. Whenever Waldo feels tired, bored, lonely, or upset, she opens her computer and fills virtual shopping carts with countless articles of clothing she does not need. Each time she fills and purchases a cart, she experiences “a combination of regret and excitement,” which is “so potent that it leaves no space for whatever feeling lurks underneath it” (10). Online shopping is a numbing agent for Waldo. She is afraid of facing her real feelings of fear, longing, desire, or resentment, and so uses clothes shopping as a way to distance herself from her own unease.
Clothing is also a way for Waldo to attempt to manipulate herself. She often feels too ugly, too big, too clumsy, or too emotional. Whenever she is preparing for an outing, she spends hours trying to curate the right outfit and, thus, the right persona. The scenes of Waldo digging through her closet, changing numerous times, and throwing clothes around her bedroom convey her constant dissatisfaction with who she is. Nothing she puts on can make her appear the way she wants to. No article of clothing takes away her pain or hides the parts of her personality she fears are “too much” for others. She treats clothes like costumes, hopeful that altering her attire might alter her character and how others perceive her.
Food
Food is a motif for desire throughout the novel. The novel is rife with scenes where Waldo is sitting in her car, lying on her bed, or lounging on the couch, eating endless amounts of junk food. In these scenes, Waldo never remarks on her hunger cues, but rather mindlessly eats food to fill up the emptiness of her home life or to numb her own desires.
Eating is an archetype for desire throughout literature, and it functions the same way in Half His Age. Waldo longs for connection, validation, and liberation, but does not know how to pursue these things in a healthy way. Instead, she tries to “satiate” her physical appetite, but her eating never aligns with her body’s true needs.
Victoria’s Secret
Waldo works at Victoria’s Secret. The store and her job there symbolize performance and artificiality. When Korgy confronts Waldo about wasting her time watching Survivor, he also chastises her for working at Victoria’s Secret, insisting she is “piss[ing] away [her] potential” (260). Waldo argues otherwise, but is aware that all her “shifts at Victoria’s Secret” have given her is “a peek into a woman’s psyche that is […] depressing” (260). The brand sells the notion of beauty and confidence as something that can be bought. The brand teaches its consumers that if they wear the right lingerie, they can make themselves desirable to men and have a more satisfying sex life.
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