60 pages • 2-hour read
How I Live Now
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Symbols & Motifs
Food and Hunger
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of disordered eating, incest, wartime violence, and violent death.
Daisy’s relationship with food and hunger changes dramatically over the course of the novel, marking her character development. In New York City, her disordered eating is born from the belief that her stepmother is trying to poison her. Food initially symbolizes the conflict between Daisy and Davina. When Daisy gets to England, she continues to starve herself in order to maintain her thin figure. She believes that she is successful at being hungry, and she even enjoys the feeling of it. When she falls in love with Edmond, she tries eating more so that he doesn’t worry, but “after a week or so he even said [she] looked better by which [she was] sure he meant fatter so [she] cut back some more after that” (55). In these early chapters, Daisy sees desire for food as a weakness, and she misguidedly embraces hunger as a way to exert obsessive control over her weight. Daisy’s disordered eating is, in part, a way for her to attain and maintain the unrealistic body image that her society promotes.
Daisy also hungers for Edmond in an emotional sense, lusting after him and succumbing to her romantic and sexual feelings for him. No matter how much time they spend in intimate embraces, they always crave more. As Daisy admits, “It was the first time in as long as I could remember that hunger wasn’t a punishment or a crime or a weapon or a mode of self-destruction. It was simply a way of being in love” (53). In this sense, although the relationship itself is taboo, hungering for love (even incestuous love) is portrayed as a more satisfying experience than Daisy’s previous efforts to starve herself in order to upset her family or to maintain a certain size. Now, she learns to enjoy a new kind of hunger that is not a part of her disordered eating.
Later in the novel, Rosoff returns her focus to Daisy’s troubled relationship with food, which changes after many people begin struggling to eat because of the war. Daisy takes part in farming and distributing food to civilians, and she directly speaks to the reader about this contrast, saying, “Now you might have gleaned from some of the hints dropped so far that food was not my best subject. So it was kind of ironic that the part of the army I got enlisted into was the one trying to provide it for everyone” (98). In this metatextual moment, Daisy points out the irony of helping others to find food even as she herself continues to avoid eating.
When Daisy and Piper travel across the country, Daisy finally begins to desire food. When they cook mushrooms for the first time, Daisy thinks, “All this time I’ve been starving, and without noticing I said it out loud, so that Piper said So have I, […] and I thought No you haven’t, not in the same way and I hope you never are” (134). Piper’s own near-starvation plays a significant role in healing Daisy’s relationship with food, for she wants to protect Piper from experiences similar to her own self-inflicted starvation. Daisy therefore changes her behavior and comes to appreciate food now that the option to eat is not always guaranteed.
Angels
Angelic imagery is used to depict both dead and living children throughout the novel, and these descriptions often invoke a sense of cherubic innocence. In Aunt Penn’s garden, for example, there is a “stone angel about the size of a child, […] with folded wings” that represents the grave of “a child who lived in the house hundreds of years ago” (7). The child’s ghostly presence in the garden therefore serves as an early highlight of The Presence of the Dead in Daisy’s world. By contrast, Piper, the very epitome of vibrancy, is also repeatedly described as an angel. Daisy describes a moment when Piper is “singing a song I’d never heard before with a funny jagged melody and her voice as pure as an angel” (18). Piper’s angelic song symbolizes her living purity and youth.
When Daisy returns to England six years after the war, she sees that Edmond, who is himself deeply haunted by memories of the dead, has become the caretaker of this statue. She observes, “The child angel had been cleared of moss and planted all around with snowdrops and white narcissus […] I thought of the ghost of the long-dead child, watching us” (180). After the trauma that he endured at Gateshead Farm, Edmond seeks out the innocence represented by the monument of the angelic child.
River
The river that runs behind Aunt Penn’s house and Gateshead Farm symbolizes happiness, hope, and direction. The happiest day of Daisy’s life is when she, Piper, Edmond, Isaac, and Osbert swim in the river before the war wrecks their lives. Daisy thinks, “If there ever was a more perfect day in the history of time it isn’t one I’ve heard about” (64). The river therefore represents an idyllic home at a particular time.
After Daisy and Piper are separated from Edmond and Isaac, Daisy starts planning to find them. She learns that the boys are near Reston Bridge, at Gateshead Farm. Once she is able to see a map, Daisy notes, “The extremely good news was that our very own swimming and fishing river” (78) would lead them to Edmond and Isaac. The landmark of the river gives her hope that she and Piper will be able to find the others. During their journey, the river gives them a true sense of direction, and Daisy reflects that “[f]ollowing the river changed [their] lives instantly for the better” (132), providing them with food, fresh water, and a sense of certainty for the remainder of their journey.
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