55 pages • 1 hour read
Susan MeissnerA Fall of Marigolds
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Scarf
The scarf, described by Taryn as “shining orange-red” with “a sweeping pattern of marigolds woven into the fabric’s Indian design” (97), signifies both love and tragedy whenever it appears. For Taryn and Clara, the scarf is what they notice first and what leads to major changes in their lives. When Taryn sees the photographs from the day of the attacks, she “recognized the scarf [she] was clutching, with its splash of marigolds” (10) before she recognizes her own face. Similarly, Clara does not notice Andrew when she sees him in the line at Ellis Island but the scarf around his neck, which “seemed to call out to [her]” (23).
At first, both Clara and Taryn try to reject the scarf. Taryn refuses to retrieve it from Mick when he calls, and Clara tries to return it to Andrew and, when that fails, plans to give it away. Indeed, the scarf functions as a reminder of pain and heartbreak for both women. However, by the end of their journeys, both women come to see the scarf as a symbol of their willingness to rejoin humanity and live full lives. The scarf’s significance has changed from a reminder of heartbreak to a symbol of love and destiny. For each woman who has owned the scarf—Lily, Clara, Eleanor, Mrs. Stauer, and Taryn—the scarf represents the ability to choose love and life, no matter the outcome. The scarf becomes a symbol of the human spirit, which is why Taryn decides to give the scarf and the strength it represents to her daughter.
The marigolds on the scarf are also symbolic in their own right. Easily overshadowed by the intense colors of the scarf overall, Mick points out to Taryn that marigolds “are very resilient flowers,” and though they’re “not fragrant like roses and sweet peas […] they can stand against odds that the more fragile flowers cannot,” continuing to bloom “after other flowers have given up” (333).
Ellis Island
Ellis Island is a symbol of hope, where thousands of men, women, and children arrived to seek a better life in the United States. For Clara, however, the island signifies a place where time has stopped. The immigrants who arrived there “were poised between two worlds,” neither “back home where their previous life had ended; nor were they embracing the wide horizon of a reinvented life” (14). It is this liminal space that attracts Clara, who wants to ignore what has happened to her before Ellis Island: the loss of Edward and the traumatizing experience of the fire. Clara learns, however, that she cannot remain in this in-between place. Like the immigrants themselves, she must either go back or move forward: No one can stay on Ellis Island forever.
Synesthetic Imagery
Meissner describes emotions in terms of color and natural forces in terms of human senses. Lily, for example, describes hate as “like poison, black as pitch” (23). Clara describes fire as “hungry for things that don’t belong to it” (51). Perhaps one of the most notable uses of imagery is when Taryn describes the ways she reimagines the events of 9/11: “I used to spend the nights when I couldn’t sleep re-creating that Tuesday in different colors. The sky not so blue, the sun coy behind puffy clouds, Kent in a yellow shirt and no travel mug” (91). Taryn imagines that she is wearing a “teal nightgown with […] little white daisies” (92) when she calls Kent to say she’s pregnant; she steps out onto the balcony where “the red geraniums were nodding hello and there was no orange scarf that day” (92). Such imagery adds depth and reality to the novel and connects the two stories, as Clara speaks of color in a similar way. Clara claims that unlike her sister, who believed “there was only one shade to every color,” Clara became a nurse because she needed color that was “more vibrant or intense or deep or unique” (22). Like Taryn, her dreams are haunted by color, “the blood puddles on the sidewalk, like flattened red bouquets” (22).
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”
Keats’ poem, written in 1819, parallels the themes with which the text engages. The poem describes two scenes engraved on an ancient urn. One scene depicts a young man in pursuit of his beloved, and another scene depicts a group of people about to sacrifice an animal to an unknown god. The poem reflects both Taryn and Clara’s situations—the idea that they are frozen in time. Like the young man on the urn, “never, never canst [they] kiss” their beloveds, however, those same beloveds “cannot fade” and will remain forever “fair” (365).
This is the price of refusing to move forward: They may hold onto the memories of their loved ones forever, but they can never grow or change. They both must decide whether they believe, along with the narrator of the poem, that “[h]eard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/[a]re sweeter” (365), that is, whether their memories are enough to satisfy them, or whether they want to risk the pain of loving again.
The last two lines of the poem are perhaps the most well-known: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” (366). It is this sentiment that gives Clara the most trouble, and she is not alone, as literary critics still debate whether this sentiment adds to or detracts from the poem. However, her insistence in her letter to Eleanor that “[l]ove is the only true constant in a fragile world” (363) seems to echo Keats’ sentiment, replacing the concepts of truth and beauty with love.
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