53 pages • 1 hour read
Jodi PicoultLeaving Time
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.
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Motherhood Is Forever
Many of Alice’s chapters are devoted to observing elephant behavior, and specifically the relationship between mothers and offspring. She marvels at the patience that elephant mothers exhibit, and the degree to which they cherish the young. Their behavior represents an ideal to Alice, and she judges both herself and other humans harshly for falling short of that ideal.
Even though Jenna is gone, Alice can’t stop reproaching herself for being a bad parent. She observes in one of her journal entries: “Once a mother, always a mother” (118). This represents a kind of curse, in that Alice can’t stop being a mother even after the death of her child. She is haunted by the vision of Jenna’s murder and her inability to prevent it.
Memory and Forgetfulness
The longevity of elephant memory contrasts sharply with issues of forgetfulness. Alice can’t entirely remember what happened on the night Nevvie died. She recovers consciousness in a pond, finding herself covered in blood. She sees that Nevvie has died but doesn’t know if the woman struck her head on a rock or if Alice killed her. Later, Alice again loses consciousness and wakes up in a hospital room. The details of the most traumatic night of her life are either vague or absent.
Similarly, Jenna can’t remember where she was on the night of the accident at the sanctuary. Her own death is completely absent from her memory until the very end of the book.
Remembering everything can be a tricky proposition. Elephants have total recall, but they’re also capable of forgiveness. Alice may have partial amnesia because it’s easier to forget than to forgive herself for what she may have done.
Grief Resolution
Alice’s main interest in elephant behavior springs from their ability to “grieve hard, but then truly, unequivocally, let go” (239). Her mother’s death triggers the study of elephant grief mainly because Alice seems incapable of figuring out how to let go of grief herself. Her sadness over the death of her two babies motivates her to flee to Africa to start a rescue center.
All of Alice’s intellectual and physical activity distances her further from the visceral experience of grief. By holding it at bay through artificial means, she doesn’t realize that she’s perpetuating the grieving process. Ultimately, her grief is bound up with a sense of guilt for all the tragedies that have happened. It isn’t until she achieves forgiveness from Jenna that she seems able to forgive herself. Then, like an elephant mother, she can finally let go.
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