50 pages • 1-hour read
Postmortem
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination, sexual violence, rape, and graphic violence.
Weather
Postmortem incorporates elements of the Southern noir genre, a subgenre of Southern Gothic literature. A key aspect of this genre is the use of weather to establish the mood of the scene. In Postmortem, weather is used as a symbol to signify the state of mind of the protagonist, Scarpetta, and the state of the investigation more generally.
In the opening scene of the novel, the weather is rainy and ominous. It is dark, there is a “relentless downpour,” and a fog obscures the landscape. Collectively, this is symbolic of a dreary, depressing mood. This mood is similar to Scarpetta’s own, as she is having a nightmare about an “evil intelligence” peering out at her from the dark through the “rain-streaked glass” (5). She is awoken by a call from Detective Marino informing her that there has been yet another murder.
Later, she reflects that “it had been a peculiar and volatile spring” (187). Days of sunshine are broken by volatile, fierce, destructive storms. She compares this weather to her relationship with Bill Boltz, a physical manifestation of his volatile, sometimes destructive behavior. She feels that she longs for “a gentle rain, something quiet to quench the longing of my heart” (188), symbolic of something soft that will nourish rather than harm her.
At the end of the novel, Scarpetta and Lucy go to Florida. Scarpetta is looking forward to the “fresh air, sunshine” that the locale promises (315). The promise of sunshine after her recent trauma is symbolic of the newfound hope and optimism Scarpetta feels, having solved the mystery, escaped death, and found newfound professional stability with the prospective ouster of county commissioner Amburgey.
Bondage Cords
Each of the victims of Ray McCorkle was killed in a similar manner: All five victims were found naked and bound with two cords. One cord was used to tie their wrists behind their back. The other was tied in such a “diabolical[]” way that “when she straightened her legs […] the ligature around her neck tightened like a noose” (13). McCorkle would then sexually assault the victim, leaving semen on their bodies. This gruesome modus operandi is a motif that connects to the theme of Misogyny and Violence Against Women.
All of the victims were hard-working, professional women; their careers were representative of their independence. McCorkle’s actions and his use of the cords represent the anger and vengeance misogynists feel toward independent women who do not need men and are therefore beyond their control. He sought to control and degrade these women with his actions, and binding them is a symbolic action that represents his desire for control; he bound them in such a way that when they sought to exercise their independence, i.e., move their legs, it resulted in their death.
The Medical Examiner Database
Dr. Scarpetta’s ongoing concern with the accuracy and integrity of the computer database of the office of the medical examiner throughout Postmortem is a motif that connects to the theme of Procedural Rigor Versus Intuition. Scarpetta sees data management and protection as essential to the procedural rigor with which she conducts her investigation. For instance, she notes how she “refused” to connect their database with the HHS Department’s “mainframe across the street […] because [her] data was highly sensitive” (85), and she worried about the security risk a centralized database would present. Scarpetta has also routinized the input of data into the database to ensure it is accurate, noting that “my clerks know to get the data only from the autopsy and lab reports” (118).
When Scarpetta realizes that someone has managed to not only hack into her database but also change an entry, she worries it could imperil the entire investigation. She is shocked to learn someone has remotely accessed her server, seeing it as a violation resulting in professional damage and a killer going free. She is even more troubled when she finds that the ligature used to kill Brenda Steppe is incorrectly entered in the database as a “tan cloth belt” instead of “a pair of nude pantyhose” (117). Scarpetta diligently searches an old record of the database to find when the record was changed in another demonstration of her procedural rigor. Although this tampering with evidence does not ultimately hinder the investigation, Scarpetta’s prioritization of the protection of this information underscores a growing understanding in the 1990s of how digital evidence was just as important as physical evidence.
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