45 pages • 1-hour read
Julie Chan Is Dead
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of animal cruelty and ableism.
Baby Mice
After Julie is introduced to the concept of Eto, she is required to eat a live baby mouse as part of an initiation ritual. She watches in horror as the other Belladonnas all consume a live mouse, but she overcomes her horror and disgust to conform with the group: “what’s a little mouse to eight beautiful girls, the family I always wanted?” (235). The mouse symbolizes the corruption of innocence and the exploitation of vulnerability: When Julie looks at the mouse, she reflects on how “I was once this small, this innocent, this loveable, a clump of cells in a belly” (229). Because of their infantile, almost fetal status, the mice also foreshadow how Angelique will subsequently sacrifice her pregnancy as an offering to Eto. For the women, some of whom are mothers, the consumption of the baby mice reflects a grotesque inversion of life-giving: Instead of nurturing, they ruthlessly take the life of a tiny creature to bolster their own power.
The vulnerability and innocence of the mice reflects the all-consuming nature of capitalism and exploitation, At the start of the novel, Julie is not a bad person: She understandably gives in to temptation because she longs for an easier and more comfortable life, including the love and support she has always lacked. When they were tragically orphaned, Julie and Chloe were as young and innocent as the baby mice. Being willing to consume such helpless creatures reveals how ruthless and relentless the women have become in their pursuit of power.
Green Dress
Shortly after Julie assumes Chloe’s identity, she attends a gala event and must wear an expensive emerald-green dress that Chloe has already selected (and been paid to wear as part of a brand endorsement). The dress symbolizes how nothing in the influencer lifestyle is quite what it seems. A casual onlooker might simply see a beautiful woman wearing a fashionable and flattering dress, but there is actually a complex web of negotiations and transactions hidden behind this image. The dress represents one of the first times that Julie comes to understand how much of her life will be dictated by the need to maintain Chloe’s identity and status.
The episode is stressful for Julie because the dress does not initially fit her, and she resorts to harmful and drastic measures to lose weight in the short time before the event. This process symbolizes how Julie rapidly adapts her personality and values to fit into the persona required to live as an influencer. Julie starts by forcibly modifying her body to fit into Chloe’s shape symbolically and literally, but she then moves on to modifying her inner self. Significantly, Julie is ambitious and disciplined enough to force her body into the dress, just as she will later abandon all her principles to maintain the lifestyle she becomes attached to. Finally, the green color of the dress carries symbolic meaning: green can symbolize envy, which reflects the dynamic between Julie and Chloe as the former is motivated to take over her sister’s life. It can also symbolize money, which reflects how the dress is connected to Chloe’s method for earning a livelihood, as Julie becomes entranced by a lifestyle in which she can earn money by simply wearing the right dress.
Nikolai’s Eye
Bella Marie tells Julie about a legend in which her ancestor, Nikolai, gained the favor of a divine being and was able to trade a sacrifice for power and wealth. Nikolai sacrificed one of his eyes to Eto; in the portrait of him, he has a bandage over one side of his face. The eye symbolizes the high cost of obsession with fame and fortune; although he lived in an era long before social media, Nikolai was determined to change his social status and accrue wealth and power. He gave a vital part of his own body to do so, symbolizing how pervasive and ruthless this obsession can be. The eye also symbolizes the loss of perspective and critical thinking that can occur when someone becomes consumed by an obsession or lured by someone in a position of power. An eye allows someone to see clearly, and the loss of physical vision symbolizes the loss of perspective and full context. Unlike someone who has experienced total vision loss, someone who retains one eye might be unaware of what they are unable to see: likewise, as she becomes increasingly consumed by the influencer lifestyle and her own desire for fame and power, Julie does not even realize how much her values and morality have been impacted. It is important to note that this conventional metaphor—using literal blindness to symbolize deficiencies of moral vision—is considered offensive by many blind people.
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