The Flamethrowers

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-8

Chapters 9-14

Chapters 15-20

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Motorcycle

The motorcycle is an important motif in this novel because it is both a physical object that embodies multiple symbolic messages and one that mirrors the structure of the novel. The pace of the novel mimics the sensation of riding a motorcycle in that there is a sensation that the machine you’re riding on is slightly out of your control, with a twinge of danger. On a motorcycle, the rider can feel every turn they make. Similarly, Kushner structures her novel with twists that give the reader whiplash.

Motorcycles symbolize speed, freedom, ambition, masculinity, femininity, and power. With a motorcycle, the rider has the freedom to subvert orderly transportation, weaving through traffic as though they’re flying above everybody else. Valera has an existential revelation while on a motorcycle, and it changes his life. He discovers that the motorcycle is the vehicle that will allow him to break social norms and codes, flee from what he despises, and throw himself towards what he desires. Reno has a similar experience with motorcycles. She feels the freest when she is speeding along on a Moto Valera, watching the landscapes blur around her. Freedom is a very important issue throughout this novel, and the motorcycle symbolizes a mode of achieving liberation.

This symbol for freedom leads to a secondary concept: ambition. When Valera decides to make the world’s fastest motorcycle, he effectively jumpstarts his successful career, marking the delineation between his cavalier boyhood and his responsible adulthood. Motorcycles becomes such a passion of his that they turn into his ambition, then continue to fuel that ambition well into his old age. Similarly, Reno uses her Moto Valera for an art project, further establishing the motorcycle as a symbol of ambition.

Much is made of the power dynamics between men and women throughout this novel. By giving both a man and a woman the power of speed on the motorcycle, Kushner challenges the societal norm that motorcycles are a notoriously masculine hobby. Valera and Reno are equals in their ability to thwart gravity on the motorcycle. Kushner therefore implies that Reno, though she requires much life experience, is as powerful in her femininity as any man, which she proves on the back of the motorcycle.

Italy

Italy acts as both setting and metaphor in The Flamethrowers. First, Reno has a connection to Italy that is later coincidentally tied into her life in New York, almost as though her exposure to Sandro was destined to be. It is a fascinating coincidence that Reno, a fan of Moto Valera, meets Sandro, the inheritor of Moto Valera, without knowing who he was. Of all the places that Reno could have gone for her study abroad in college, she goes to Italy, not knowing that in a couple of years she would return in a different context. While on her first trip to Italy, Reno skips class and spends time with motorcycle gangs, which is the same narrative that Sandro’s father had as a young man in Italy. And so, Reno is already tied to Italy in ways that she doesn’t yet realize when she meets Sandro.

Secondly, Italy acts as a metaphor for unstable and urgent growth. When Reno visits Italy the second time, she does so essentially as Sandro’s guest. She is exposed to a very Continental aristocratic lifestyle, quite different from that of the United States. Sandro’s family believes in the old school dynamics of wealthy families, a dynamic that doesn’t really exist in New York’s art scene. The Valera family exists because of the history of Italy that allowed for the stripping of union and labor rights. The conflict that Reno bears witness to in Rome is a product of this tension between worker and owner. This experience helps Reno contextualize her life in New York, and she sees what can happen when people truly come together to form communal bonds. The character development Reno endures while in Italy is almost violent in its urgency. She has no one to depend on but herself, even though she believes Gianni to be her guardian there. It is the place where she finally recognizes the uglier truth of her relationship with Sandro, and the place where she acknowledges her potential for powerful womanhood.

Italy is therefore not just a setting in the novel—it is a character of its own that motivates Reno to take stock of her life.

New York City

Like Italy, New York City of the 1970s acts as its own character. The city is personified as sexy, turbulent, chaotic, and exciting. New York is a lonely place where people form farcical connections with one another in order to survive the grit and speed of the city. Reno enters New York as a young woman eager for life experience, and she reenters New York at the end of the novel as a more knowledgeable and experienced woman who has been simultaneously trampled and inspired by life. New York represents a place where someone like Reno can be both anonymous and surrounded by people. Her friends create absurd narratives of their lives, but it seems that this is the normal way of handling New York City. The characters centered in New York are part and parcel of their environment; they make New York the severe and snobby place it can be, but they’re also victims of this severity and snobbery. New York provides a stark juxtaposition to Nevada, Reno’s home state. Her endless views of sky, desert, and mountain are replaced by skyscrapers that block out the sky. Whereas Nevada and Utah are colorful and vibrant, New York is grey and harsh. New York is a difficult place to live, but this difficulty is precisely what makes this city the perfect symbol for Reno’s discovery of her powerful womanhood.