Our Infinite Fates

“We could just skip the Montague-Capulet performance, no?”

Evelyn’s wry allusion to Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet is apt for a number of reasons. First, the feuding fathers of the Sola and Quiñónez families hate one another for no good reason, just like Lord Capulet and Lord Montague, and yet their children have fallen in love. Moreover, the allusion foreshadows the star-crossed nature of Arden and Evelyn’s relationship in this lifetime, as in so many others. Romeo’s and Juliet’s deaths seemed to be fated, and Evelyn sometimes feels similarly about hers and Arden’s.

“But I would always try to build the dam anyway.”

Evelyn uses a metaphor to compare the way she tries to prepare herself for her eventual death in each lifetime to building a dam: The dam doesn’t eliminate the water but holds it back, just as Evelyn can never eliminate the probability that Arden will kill her. The metaphor also indirectly characterizes her as unfailingly hopeful because, despite never having succeeded in her efforts, she continues to trust that it could be possible this time.

“These flashes of past lives felt like tiny splintered fragments of a gigantic mosaic, the full picture always beyond my reach. Like the twist of a kaleidoscope, rearranging the pattern every time I tried too hard to study it.”

Evelyn uses similes to compare her memories of past lives to the pieces of a mosaic or those within a kaleidoscope: Either way, it is impossible for her to get a full view of her existence. The reasons for her existence’s pattern are never clear to her, and these descriptions convey that feeling and her frustration, which motivates much of her action.

“In every life, Arden was drawn to literature like a bee to nectar.”

There are certain aspects of Evelyn’s and Arden’s personalities that return in every incarnation. Arden, for example, is always a poet, and Evelyn uses a simile to suggest his instinctive attraction to language. Her comparison characterizes him as thoughtful and creative, heightening the mystery that surrounds his violence toward Evelyn.

“Because of a deal made long ago.”

Arden always tries to avoid providing details about why he and Evelyn seem fated to enact the same patterns over and over. Here, he offers a reason but purposely avoids saying who made the deal that has ensnared them. His unwillingness to explain this foreshadows the revelation that it is Evelyn who made the deal and who is ultimately responsible for their apparent fates.

“[I]n the last few lives I’d had a sense that the overall arc of the world was curving in the right direction. Some cultures were broadening their arms to all kinds of love, the different colors and textures it could be woven from.”

In Nauru, 1968, Evelyn offers this bit of social commentary. She suggests that the world is becoming more accepting of the different ways love can appear—regardless of the gender of those involved—and that this is “right” and good. The text offers repeated representations of The Fluidity of Sexual and Gender Identity to underscore and support this claim, suggesting that love transcends and even remolds such categories.

“Because that’s the thing about humans—we leave traces of our souls everywhere, as unique and identifying as fingerprints.”

Evelyn uses a simile comparing the individuality of souls to fingerprints. Each fingerprint is inherently unique and detailed, as is each soul, and this makes her certain that she’ll find traces of Arden among Ceri’s things. The idea that “traces” of people linger also reflects the novel’s depiction of love as a force that binds individuals across lifetimes.

“Ruthful, the original. From the thirteenth century, or around then. How can you have forgotten? It means endless compassion, a deep empathy for others […] I hope you never lose that bottomless capacity for love. I hope you hold on to what makes you human.”

Arden’s memory of archaic language (“ruthful”) emphasizes that he remembers almost everything about their former lives. If he can remember something as inconsequential as a word, the novel implies, then each painful betrayal—every killing of his beloved—must remain etched into his memory. Arden’s words also indirectly characterize both him and Evelyn, hinting at Arden’s protectiveness of Evelyn’s loving and empathetic nature.

“Arden was a vast tapestry that grew more detailed with every incarnation.”

Evelyn uses a metaphor to compare Arden’s soul to a tapestry, embroidered in exquisite detail. This characterizes him as similarly beautiful and thoughtfully constructed, bit by bit, by his many lifetimes. Each relationship, every incarnation of his “self,” only adds to his beauty and deepens his unique qualities.

“Over the congealing trenches of the Western Front, there was a sunset of peach and pink and purple smudged across a canvas of gold.”

This visual imagery describes the contradictory elements of the wartime setting. While the trenches are described as “congealing,” which suggests blood coagulating or clotting—a violent connotation—the sky is compared, via metaphor, to a brilliant golden canvas streaked with bright, beautiful colors. This natural beauty is unexpected and ironic given the death and destruction going on below. It demonstrates the Blight of Humanity as well as Nature’s Apathy to Human Pain.

“Muse is too simple a word for what you are to me.”

Arden alludes to the figures associated with inspiration in ancient Greek myth to describe how he feels about Evelyn. His word choice also foreshadows the text’s revelation that Greece is where their love story began; in fact, Calliope, Arden’s name in that lifetime, is the muse of epic poetry. Although Arden and Evelyn cannot remember that lifetime due to Evelyn’s first deal with the Mother, this choice suggests that something within Arden does remember, just as Evelyn remembers their love in every lifetime.

“[Ceri] was also a person in his own right, but a thousand years in this world had taught me that we only truly exist in relation to the ones we love.”

Evelyn’s assertion highlights the power of love to shape human events. Across her many lives, she has had the opportunity to observe that love is like energy, never destroyed. People are individuals, but they are ultimately defined by their loving relationships and connections to others, and the effect that they have on those around them lives on after their deaths.

“He changed his mind once before, in the silver-cold of darkest Siberia. I could get him to change it again. My hand went to the folded square paper in my pocket. I still believe.”

The list of items that Evelyn wants to accomplish or complete once she finally reaches adulthood symbolizes her optimism and capacity for hope. This is why she reaches for it when she tells herself that it is possible to get Arden to change his mind about killing her. She has changed his mind before, and remembering her list bolsters her hope that she can get him to do it again.

“If I could escape, I would not just be free of Allum. I would be free of Arden. The thought was a yellow-bellied goldfinch against a clean blue sky.”

Evelyn uses a metaphor to compare the idea of escaping both the psychiatric hospital and her death at Arden’s hands to a brightly colored songbird against a brilliant sky. The possibility feels so hopeful and vibrant to her that she compares it to something living: an animal often associated with freedom and cheer because it flies and sings.

“He used to live and breathe for his family. I just couldn’t say for certain when it had changed—whether […] the walls had been constructed slowly over time, brick after brick, stone after stone, until one day he’d looked up and they were impenetrable.”

Evelyn uses a metaphor to compare Arden’s growing emotional guardedness to the construction of a fortress or castle. Her empathy enables her to understand that Arden’s powerful memories of their past lives and all the pain he’s experienced make him unwilling to give people access to his heart. If he allows himself to love someone, he knows pain will follow.

“The tether was not snipped. Instead it grew a thousand times stronger. All the breath was sucked from my lungs. An invisible lasso tightened around my middle. There was a ferocious burning at the back of my neck, as though a puppeteer had hooked me on a string and hauled me backward.”

Evelyn typically describes her bond with Arden in terms of “yearning,” but in one of the two lifetimes in which she lives to see her 18th birthday, she claims to feel a “tether” connecting her to Arden. Unbeknownst to her, it is her tether to the Mother that she feels. Her simile is therefore more apt than she realizes, as the Mother is like a puppeteer, pulling her and Arden’s strings.

“Those twines and ribbons tied around his wrists. My gaze hitched on a piece of narrow red, though I could not say for certain why. Only that it yanked a cord somewhere deep in my chest.”

In Wales, while looking at Arden’s wrists, Evelyn remembers her emotional connection to red. Though she can no longer remember the lifetime(s) in which she came to associate the color with Arden, her heart recalls its importance. The motif of red and the sense of memory that it creates emphasize the power of love to shape human events.

“I was so tired of sailing through history like a hunk of driftwood that could never grow roots […] No matter how many lives I lost, […] I would always be known by Arden. Perhaps he was my true homeland; our existence a language only we could speak.”

Evelyn uses a simile to compare her sense of rootlessness, without a real home or place of her own, to driftwood: She feels that she cannot “put down roots” because her time in each life is so curtailed. Her metaphor describing Arden as her “homeland” thus suggests just one of the reasons why he is so important to her, despite the fact that he will try to kill her soon. He is a unique constant in her life, providing her with some sense of enduring connection.

“The internet was a Russian doll, gifts tucked inside curses tucked inside gifts, no way of knowing which formed its core.”

Evelyn uses a metaphor to compare the internet to a set of matryoshka nesting dolls. The “deeper” one goes, the more one finds, and it’s hard to predict precisely what one will discover. This comments on the nature of the internet and its unpredictable effects and revelations.

“We were ruled by the twin pillars of pursuit and escape, our souls reduced to Tom and Jerry, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, the crude concepts of hero and villain, chaser and chased.”

Evelyn alludes to characters from classic children’s cartoons, comparing the dynamic between herself and Arden to these pairs of hunter and hunted—exaggerated and comical caricatures who are only significant in terms of their behavior toward one another. Despite the complexity of Evelyn’s and Arden’s souls and love, their relationship seems to Evelyn to be both defined and reduced by the dynamic that exists between them.

“So much fresh devastation, over and over again. No matter how many people I loved and lost, it felt like a fishing hook through my heart every time.”

Evelyn uses a simile to compare the feeling of loving despite knowing that loss is inevitable to the pain and tension of a fishhook stuck in her heart. She is deeply emotional and empathetic, so the experience of loving and losing never gets easier. Although Evelyn often laments this, her capacity for love ultimately turns out to be a strength that helps her defeat the Mother.

“As ever, he was silent. Stoic. An oyster I’d been trying to shuck for a millennium.”

Evelyn uses a metaphor to compare Arden to an oyster, an animal that is solitary and difficult to crack. Arden doesn’t give much away emotionally because he is so guarded, like an oyster contained and protected by its hard shell.

“How it must feel to gradually realise what you have to do—and just how early that happened. How young he sometimes was when he began the search for me. How it stole his childhood again and again and again.”

Evelyn’s consideration of Arden’s feelings demonstrates her empathy. Her consideration for this man who has murdered her in almost every life she can remember indirectly characterizes her as understanding to the extreme. She can easily imagine the toll his actions take on him, and this is part of why he loves her so much.