71 pages • 2 hours read
Carlos Ruiz ZafónThe Angel's Game
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008A 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
Great Expectations
The Charles Dickens book Great Expectations emerges frequently over the course of the book, often as a symbol for David's vanity and sense of entitlement. Published in 1861, Great Expectations tells the story of a young impoverished orphan named Pip who works to become a gentleman thanks to the patronage of a mysterious and generous benefactor. It is easy to see why such a narrative would appeal to young David; however, unlike Pip, whose patronage comes as a result of a kind deed, David finds himself a benefactor out of sheer randomness. For that reason, David never truly earns the "great expectations" he has for himself and his career.
The Great Expectations symbol reemerges later during an aborted suicide attempt. As David readies himself to pull the trigger of a gun pressed against his head, he feels "a gust of wind whipping against the tower and the study windows burst open, hitting the wall with great force. An icy breeze touched my face, bringing with it the lost breath of great expectations" (172). It is his writerly ambitions—born while reading Dickens but stoked by Corelli through appeals to David's vanity—that appear to save him from committing suicide.
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books
One of the core symbolic constructions of the author's entire book series is the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. While it is the kindly Sempere who introduces David to the labyrinth of books, the aura the author builds around the Cemetery suggests that it is a place of dread and evil:
The floor we were stepping over sown with tombstones, their inscriptions, crosses, and faces dissolving into the stone. The keeper stopped and lowered the gas lamp so that the light slid over some of the pieces of the macabre puzzle (159).
Then there are the rumors of the man in black who supposedly haunts the Cemetery. Isaac explains, "He is our guardian angel, the angel of lies and of the night" (162).
Sempere's connection to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, however, suggests that the labyrinth is neither evil nor good. Rather, it may be a place where the word of God and the word of the Devil coexist. Perhaps the author envisions the Cemetery as a sort of theological battlefield. The more books there are like David's The Steps to Heaven, the more good there is in the world. In turn, the more books like Lux Aeterna are on the shelves, the more evil there is in the world. David's shocking discovery that virtually every book in the Cemetery is a dark fable similar to his suggests that the evil that emerges during the first half of the 20th century is all-encompassing.
Angels
The character of Corelli is frequently associated with angel iconography, particularly with his angel brooch, which plays a major role in the book's plot. This is a not-so-subtle reference to Lucifer, the angel who, according to Christian lore, sought heaven's highest seat, only to be cast down to hell. There is also a painting of an angel hanging in Corelli's sitting room. Perhaps most disturbing is the angel on the underside of the spider the doctors remove from David's head when he dreams. This point suggests that Corelli himself is responsible for the tumor.
Related Titles
By Carlos Ruiz Zafón
