Wait for Me
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness or death.
The Broken Mandolin
The broken mandolin is one of the novel’s central symbols, representing a resilient female artistic lineage and the creation of beauty from pain. As an object passed from Merry to Elle to Marijohn, it physically embodies their shared history of loss and creative survival. Its defining feature is that it is broken yet still produces beautiful music, reflecting the endurance of their musical legacy despite loss. For Marijohn, who grows up without her mother, the instrument is a significant tangible link to her past and an important part of her artistic identity. The mandolin’s journey reinforces the theme of Music as a Vessel for Grief, as it preserves memories of loss and connects the women’s musical experiences across generations. Merry first pieces it together after finding it shattered, giving it a voice when she has none. After Merry’s death, the mandolin becomes a vessel for Elle’s sorrow, and later, its reappearance on the news inspires Elle to reclaim her own lost voice.
The mandolin’s survival and continued use symbolize the endurance of an authentic, non-commercial artistic tradition. When Weston takes the instrument, he later explains that it was “rotting” and that he wanted to restore it: “Fix it so it could actually live. So you could hear it again” (304-05). His desire to restore it emphasizes its symbolic importance as a musical legacy that must be preserved through continued use. The instrument’s significance culminates when Marijohn plays it while recording Elle’s Merry album, bringing Merry’s musical legacy into the songs Elle wrote in her memory. Its continued use connects the three women and allows their shared artistic history to find expression in a new generation.
The Woods and the River
The wilderness of Appalachia, particularly the woods and rivers of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, is a symbol of both sanctuary and danger. On one hand, the natural world is a refuge from the commercial pressures of the music industry and a place where authentic creation, love, and healing can occur. Marijohn and Lazarus develop their musical partnership in the woods, free from public scrutiny. It is also in the seclusion of the woods where Elle finds renewed creative freedom and falls in love with Weston. Elle, instinctively drawn to this environment, sees its potential for rebirth, reflecting that “[a]ny other woman might have feared these haunted woods would be her undoing, but Elle yearned for such a gift” (164). Her sentiment captures her willingness to embrace the uncertainty of the wilderness as an opportunity to rediscover herself and her music.
On the other hand, this same wilderness is a place of death, danger, and concealed truths. It is where Merry accidentally dies and where Elle later sends Merry’s body into the river. Years later, Elle’s car crashes into another river, where she nearly drowns before pulling herself to safety, while her submerged vehicle conceals evidence of her disappearance. The meteor that strikes the wooded ravine is both a destructive force and a catalyst for revelation, disturbing the riverbank and exposing a piece of Elle’s lost guitar that helps uncover her connection to the area. This duality makes the woods and river symbols of the tension between concealment and revelation: The wilderness offers freedom from public scrutiny while preserving evidence of the past that eventually resurfaces.
Hands
The recurring focus on hands is a motif that reveals characters’ authentic identities, skills, and moral complexities. They reflect aspects of a person’s experiences and history, often in direct contrast to the manufactured personas of the music industry. Merry’s healing hands, Weston’s skilled hands as a luthier, and Abe’s grease-stained hands as a mechanic all signify lives shaped by tangible, meaningful work. This motif reinforces the theme of Commercialization as Artistic Erosion by showing the value of physical craft over superficial image. Arlo Weston’s resistance to Elle performing with a guitar is rooted in this conflict; he argues that the image of a “cutesy girl” is incompatible with callused hands, to which Elle defiantly replies, “This one would” (149). Her callused hands are proof of her authenticity as a musician, a truth Arlo initially wants to erase for commercial appeal.
Furthermore, Elle’s hands embody her contradictory impulses. They are the instruments of her greatest creative achievements, bringing forth the music that defines her. At the same time, Elle uses her strumming hand to punch Josie Starling at the Grand Ole Opry. This act, driven by years of betrayal, demonstrates that the same hands that create beauty can also be used for destruction. The motif of hands thus reveals the complexity of Elle’s character, connecting her capacity for artistic expression with the anger and destructive impulses that shape her actions.
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