I Found You

In the final part of I Found You, Jewell doesn’t include chapters from the past. Instead, the only chapter title in this section is “Two Months Later.” This represents a switch for the characters; Frank and Alice are looking towards the future, instead of wondering about his past. Also, Jewell includes an intertextual section before Chapter 60 begins: the newspaper article by Lesley about Mark’s arrest. It fills in some details in the main narrative but also illustrates how the same narrative can be presented in several different forms: fiction and journalism.

Jewell concludes Memory as the Foundation of Identity in Part 4. Identity is deeply connected to naming. While Frank likes being called Frank, and Alice likes calling him Frank, he decides to claim his past by identifying by his birth name, Graham. After spending time in a psychiatric ward, he doesn’t feel “like Gray. But also, not like Frank […] I feel like Graham […] the man I was supposed to be” (337). He abandons the nickname he adopted as a teenager as a way of reinventing himself. He can only pursue reinvention after he learns about, and processes, the traumatic events of his past.

This new identity leads to resolving the theme of The Relationship Between Memory and Love. He tells Alice, “Graham is a good man. Not exciting. But good. Graham is good husband material” (338). Graham is comfortable pursuing a real romantic relationship after working on himself under the supervision of a psychiatrist. He had to forgive himself for taking revenge on Mark for Kirsty’s death. It was easier for Alice to forgive him because she loves him more than he loved himself before seeking psychiatric care. In the end, he is clearly on the path to loving himself, as well as loving Alice and her family.

On the other hand, Lily has to process that Carl is Mark. After learning about his true identity and unforgivable acts of murder and assault, she has to move on without him. She wonders if he “truly believed he was Carl Monrose, all-around good guy and enigmatic everyman. Maybe she had cured him of his badness, if only temporarily” (327). Perhaps her love changed his identity while they were together and while she was ignorant of his past. After he is arrested, his friend Russ helps Lily build a new life, where she learns to love the child she is a nanny to, and makes new friends.

Jewell also concludes ideas about The Intersection of Class and Criminality in Part 4. While Mark is apprehended and put in jail, Kitty is “currently out on bail awaiting trial […] sold both her houses to a property developer at a knockdown price and was currently living in a rented flat in Ripon” (337). As an accomplice to murder, she loses money on her houses and moves from being a property owner to a renter. Criminal behavior caused her to fall to lose some—but not all—of her wealth. Kitty is still comfortable and in a better economic position than many people: Her flat is still “large, genteel” (340). She still has many possessions. The higher one’s socioeconomic class, the more room there is to fall without reaching poverty.

Lastly, Jewell brings the symbolism of hands, maps, and peacocks together in the final section. Graham’s hands are no longer mysterious. They have committed violence to avenge his sister’s death, which is a kind of violence that Alice can forgive. At the end of the novel, Graham’s hands become a symbol of their reconnection after he leaves the psychiatric ward. Another part of their reconnection is Alice’s gift for Graham’s mother: a dancing peacock made of maps. Alice explains: “It was just a crazy idea I had. This idea that I could somehow re-create her lost life. Give her the history she never had. Make something real” (339). Alice picked maps of places she imagined Kirsty would have traveled to had she lived. Graham is pleased with how she used art to honor his sister’s memory.