43 pages • 1 hour read
Miriam ToewsFight Night
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A 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
Sports and Teamwork
Grandma is an avid supporter of Toronto-based sports teams, particularly the Raptors basketball team, though she also uses baseball metaphors to illustrate points. The family’s doorbell is set to the tune of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” The family’s connection to sports, particularly local teams, represents both their rootedness to their home (as opposed to Grandma’s aversion to her old religious community) and their attempts to create a family unit.
This motif runs throughout the book, with references to everything from Larry Bird to a fictional team called the Zombies in which Swiv participates. Connected to the theme of The Good Fight: Finding Joy, sports provide a symbol of what the family aspires to be. As Mom puts it, “We need teams. We need others to fight alongside us. She said the reason the Raptors are so good is because they’re collectively trying to win” (71). The support of others may be the sole reason that one can win; in the case of Mom and her family, this is a matter of life and death. When Swiv makes up her team of Zombies, she states, “We could never die” (84). She has been privy to too much untimely death in her young life, and thus, she creates a scenario wherein this will be preemptively circumvented.
Later, while watching a Raptors game, Grandma becomes angry. The team is not playing well; they are not “playing hard” (88). Grandma tells Swiv, “[T]hat’s a terrible, terrible way to lose, by not trying and not fighting. You play hard to the end, Swiv” (88). Clearly, Grandma’s fears over the family legacy of suicide reverberate as she watches her team give up. Sports also allow Grandma to connect with strangers; she talks to people on the plane about various teams and their prospects. It not only helps her bond with Swiv and pass along some wisdom but also helps her to relate to others. Through sports references, the novel asserts that forming bonds (teams) is one of the only ways to survive.
Conchigliette and Comfort
One of the few items that Grandma can comfortably eat are little pasta shells called conchigliette. Swiv makes them for her nearly every day, though they tend to scatter when Mom or Grandma are in the kitchen. Thus, just as Swiv picks up Grandma’s pills when she drops them on the floor, she constantly retrieves the pasta shells from all over. This symbol of the family’s disordered nature—the fact that the nine-year-old daughter cooks many of their meals—also sometimes represents comfort and closeness. The three generations of women often eat their conchigliette together as they watch television, usually sporting events.
Swiv makes them because they are “Grandma’s favourite food,” but when Grandma tries to open the package, “the conchigliettes fly everywhere” (20). They represent the chaos inherent to the household, and Mom especially responds to the messiness: “The conchigliettes go into everybody’s stuff,” Swiv writes, “but Mom is the one who freaks out about it” (20). Still, later, when Mom has had a difficult day at rehearsal, she and Grandma go into her room to talk while Swiv “put[s] water on to boil for the conchigliettes” (51). They are a source of comfort after Mom has an emotional meltdown. Once they are ready, the three sit down to eat, and Grandma and Mom embarrass Swiv with talk of sex, laughing and teasing. Food is one way that the characters bring their generations together and try to find happiness in their chaotic lives.
Finally, when Grandma attempts to tell Swiv about the imminence of death, Swiv rejects her talk of impermanence. She does not want to contemplate the fact that Grandma’s health is declining and that she will eventually lose her. Instead, she exits the conversation to boil more water for yet another round of conchigliette. The small pasta becomes a soft comfort after some very hard truths.
Willit Braun and Repression
Willit Braun is a symbol of the oppressive experience that Grandma endured in her village, likely a conservative Mennonite community. He represents all the ways that life’s small joys are stamped out by repressive ideologies and petty tyrants, as Grandma sees people like Braun. He is the primary example of the diametric opposite of what Grandma proposes: that The Good Fight: Finding Joy is about seeking pleasure amid the absurdity of existence.
Swiv records Grandma as she talks about Braun, whom she calls “pompous, authoritarian, insecure, frustrated, self-pitying, resentful, envious, vain and vindictive” (30). She tells Swiv that when she was young, her father protected her against the elder Braun, and when she was older and married to Grandpa, she had to protect herself. She notes that Grandpa “couldn’t fight for himself. He couldn’t do it” (31), which reveals the impact that such repression can have (as well as Grandpa’s experiences as a probable refugee). It rendered Grandpa impotent, and he ultimately succumbed to despair.
When Swiv and Grandma visit Grandma’s nephews, they discuss Braun. He still calls to try to reenlist Mom and Grandma into the community, and Ken reveals that “[h]e came to Fresno and accused everybody here of being too enlightened” (192). Braun’s function is to dampen that light, to put a lid on the happiness that the others enjoy in their liberation. Swiv is surprised to see that, even in the nursing home that she and Grandma visit, the other former members of the community remember “the awful reign of Willit Braun” (209). He is a reminder that not even escaping the oppressive regimes of Cold War Russia or Germany can protect one from the tyranny of would-be dictators.
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By Miriam Toews
