70 pages • 2-hour read
The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion
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Symbols & Motifs
Letters
Letters form an important motif in the text. During World War II, letters and telegrams are the primary ways of communicating with soldiers overseas or folks stationed at military bases. While this is not an epistolary novel, many of its chapters are made up of letters between Fritzi, Billy, and other members of her family. Angie, Wink’s wife, also writes one to him. These letters symbolize everyone’s connection to one another despite great distances. For those concerned about their loved ones during World War II, receiving a letter also offers reassurance that they are still alive. For example, Fritzi asks Wink to write Angie because she “just lives from letter to letter. She’s fighting this war with you, Wink, and is being brave” (171). Letters do not just contain updates; they provide lifelines.
Letters also serve an expository purpose, allowing Flagg to convey direct information through her characters. As they explain what’s been happening in their lives to someone, they are also recounting it for the reader. At times, too, Flagg steps back and shows what’s not being said in a letter, as when “what Fritzi fails to mention to Billy was at one of the last bar stops, she had run into that big redheaded Irishman Joe O’Connor from home” (253). Letters only carry the information intended for their readers, and so they can also be used to obscure the truth. In this case, the readers can infer that Fritzi feels ashamed about her rendezvous with Joe because she does not disclose it to Billy.
Birds
Birds play an important symbolic role in this novel, beginning simply as subjects of Sookie’s devotion and then providing her with an entrepreneurial purpose. Sookie’s observation that blue jays often swoop in and eat birdseed before smaller birds can get to the birdhouse at first seems like a small fixation. However, the blue jays are symbolic of how Lenore often takes the spotlight off of Sookie, with Sookie feeling like she’ll always disappoint her mother. She is the small bird, and this is why she cares so much about the littler birds. Her invention of Blue Jay Away symbolizes how she has discovered who she is outside of Lenore, as it is a tool that literally deters larger birds from taking the attention away from smaller ones.
Moreover, birds provide a connection to her birth mother. When Fritzi recalls that she nicknamed Sophie “Saint Francis of Pulaski” (304) because of her care for stray animals, including birds, Sookie feels an immediate connection with her mother. This connection reassures her that, although she’ll never meet her, she can still find common ground with her.
Secrets
Secrets permeate this novel, forming an important motif. Sookie’s discovery of her adoptive status incites the central conflict as she struggles to figure out who she is. Her true birth mother’s identity is a secret for much of the story. Other secrets are kept and never revealed: Sookie never discovers that Lenore’s mother left when she was a child; Lenore never learns that Sookie knows about her adoption; and Fritzi never tells Sookie that Sophie’s death was the result of another pilot’s malevolence.
Flagg’s decision to reveal some secrets but not others suggests that the truth does not always matter. This is evident when Buck tells Sookie that their blood relation never mattered to him, saying, “To me, you were always just my sister, and I just felt lucky to have you” (244). Similarly, Fritzi thinks that Sookie has been through enough, and “what good would it do for her anyway?” (309). She knows that her niece would never be able to prove that Bud Harris did anything to Sophie because she herself had tried. Her decision to keep the secret arises out of her desire to care for Sookie.
In other cases, the truth holds a lot of weight. For Sookie, discovering the look of shyness in her mother’s face provides comfort, as “Sookie knew that look so well. She had seen it on her own face so many times before” (304). Seeing the similarities between herself and the quiet Jurdabralinski sister gives Sookie a stronger sense of her own identity. Ultimately, these secrets help shape Sookie’s life and her relationships with both her adopted and birth families.
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