In Memoriam

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-5

Part 1, Chapters 6-12

Part 2, Chapters 13-22

Part 2, Chapters 23-36

Part 3

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Poetry

Content Warning: This section discusses war trauma and death.

Poetry is an important motif in the novel. Ellwood references various poets, and his love of poetry is representative of his innocence and his desire to see beauty in the world. In particular, he repeatedly uses the word “magic” to refer to England, as he loves the beauty of England’s poets and their discussions of love, the land, courage, valor, and more.

In his budding relationship with Gaunt during the war, he regularly uses poetry to describe how he feels, quoting poems like “They Flee From Me” by Thomas Wyatt, with the lines “I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, / That now are wild and do not remember” used to compare the way that Gaunt has become distant and detached (104). When Gaunt and Ellwood prepare to leave to capture the German soldier, Gaunt tries to make plans, but Ellwood repeatedly interrupts him with lines of poetry from Shakespeare. He recites, “My spirit loved and loves him yet / Like some poor girl whose heart is set / On one whose rank exceeds her own” (144). These lines are Ellwood’s attempt to tell Gaunt how he truly feels for the first time, confessing his love through poetry.

However, as Ellwood feels The Impact of War, he becomes disenchanted by England and its poets. Ellwood becomes angry at poetry, refusing to quote it and instead writing his own horrific poems about the war. He thinks of how “they [a]re a small-minded people, the English, and their greatest art form, writing, [i]s small-minded also, it [i]s provincial; it d[oes] not translate like music and painting” (356). This bitterness marks a stark contrast from the Ellwood earlier in the novel, who relied on poetry heavily to express his feelings and felt that it was beautiful.

However, in the final lines of the text, Ellwood quotes poetry again for the first time in years, telling Gaunt, “I cannot heave my heart into my mouth” (373), a quote from Shakespeare’s King Lear. Despite everything that Ellwood and Gaunt have been through, his ability to once again quote and believe in the power of poetry provides hope for his recovery from the war and the future of their relationship.

Preshute’s Cemetery

The cemetery at Preshute is a symbol in In Memoriam, and its meaning changes throughout the course of the text. The cemetery is introduced in the first few pages when Gaunt and Ellwood wander through the cemetery discussing the war. Their dormitory is named after the cemetery—Cemetery House—and it is a place the two often sneak out to visit. As Ellwood looks out at the cemetery’s land, he tells Gaunt, “[I]t’s a form of magic, all this […] crickets and hunting and ices on the lawn on summer afternoons. England is magic” (8). The cemetery is initially symbolic of their happiness at Preshute; they give little thought to the fact that they are in a field where dead bodies are buried, still ignorant of death.

However, as the novel progresses, the two feel the effects of The Impact of War and view the cemetery differently. Ellwood visits the cemetery when he is on leave and Gaunt is presumed dead. He goes with Roseveare, and they discuss the “In Memoriam” pages and the deaths of all of the students from Preshute. Ironically, Ellwood refers to the students as “Cemetery boys” (177), referring to their Preshute house yet unintentionally drawing attention to the fact that dozens of them are now dead due to the war—and literally in a cemetery. The cemetery now represents all the loss that Ellwood has experienced throughout the war.

Ellwood also notes, for the first time, the individual graves and how they each mark a death. He comments on how nice it is that the headstones represent “an era when your death bought you a brief moment at the centre of something. To be important, rather than one of millions” (178-79). In the past, deaths were mourned individually and commemorated through funerals and headstones; now, he assumes that Gaunt—and millions of other bodies—will go unrecovered, neither buried nor properly remembered.

White Feathers

The white feather is a motif that represents Personal Desire Versus Societal Expectation, as it is used by civilian women to shame young men who are not at the war front.

The white feather is a historically accurate element, used during World War I in England to encourage young men to join the war effort. In 1914, Admiral Charles Penrose Fitzgerald drew from a popular novel The Four Feathers (1902) by A. E. W Mason, which utilizes a white feather to symbolize weakness and cowardice. Fitzgerald started the “Order of the White Feather” to shame young men into enlisting. After starting in the town of Folkestone, the movement spread through Britain and even into other countries throughout World War I. As happens to Ellwood in the novel, feathers were even handed out incorrectly to men on leave, those excused from military duty, and those working essential jobs for the country.

In In Memoriam, the white feather first appears when Gaunt goes into town after his 18th birthday. Although he is strongly opposed to the war, the extreme shame and anger he feels after receiving the feather guilts him into joining. He feels as though, “[f]aced with all those scornful, staring faces, he [] want[s] nothing more than to disappear” (19-20). Despite his own personal desires, the expectation of a crowd of civilians shames him into risking his life and joining a war that he does not believe in.

Later, while on leave, Ellwood is boarding a train when he is stopped by a woman holding a white feather. She assumes that he is not a soldier, exclaiming, “Who dodges trenches so gallantly!” (177), and then thrusting the feather at him. In response, instead of feeling shame or even informing the woman that he is already in the war, he responds angrily, “snarl[ing] at her, like a dog” and then “glowering at the other passengers” throughout the rest of the ride (177). While the scenes parallel each other with the woman and a white feather, they differ in the boys’ reactions to it, highlighting The Impact of War. After spending years in the trenches, seeing his friends die, and suffering the mental effects of war, Ellwood has grown viscerally angry at the civilians in town and is unwilling and even unable to use civility when faced with the ignorance of civilians and their white feathers.