Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Fiction | Novel | Adult

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Symbols & Motifs

NPCs

In the world of video games, an NPC is a non-player/playable character, a character that is not controlled by a player. NPCs exist as background characters and create the universe of the game. For instance, an NPC could be a traffic cop or a shopkeeper in an online simulation; someone who makes the universe of the game believable. Sometimes they serve as villains or obstacles the player must overcome. Sadie Green notes that male creators often create sexualized female NPCs to attract audiences, such as in a game she plays with Dov where the player character spies “on a female non-player character exercising in her underwear” (43). This episode seeds the idea that NPCs are often misunderstood or manipulated by game-makers and players, and they actually hold the keys to the online and offline world. This idea is expanded upon through Marx Watanabe, whom Samson Masur calls an NPC in a fit of anger. In the trio of Sam, Sadie, and Marx, Marx can ostensibly be seen as an NPC since he doesn’t design the look or heart of a game. Though Sam doesn’t really mean these words and loves Marx deeply, his statement shows the tendency of some creative people to dismiss others as predictable and boring. Sam overlooks the fact that Marx’s important administrative and supposedly non-creative work in their company gives him and Sadie the privilege to design the games they want.

When Sam throws the term NPC at Marx as an insult, Marx reminds him: “There’s no game without the NPCs…There’s just some bullshit hero, wandering around with no one to talk to and nothing to do” (292). Marx and Sadie make this point earlier as well to Sam when they tell him “that one doesn’t have to be a god or a king for your life to have meaning” (257). The NPC is symbolic of the important, supportive work that goes into making any creative project. A writer’s supportive wife could be an NPC in real life, or a friend like Marx who sponsors Unfair Games in its infancy. The importance of NPCs undoes Sam’s weakness, which is to confuse drama and grandstanding with heroism. As it turns out, Marx is the most heroic of the trio, bravely facing the gunmen and protecting the Unfair Games employees.

“The Strawberry Thief” and Birds

“The Strawberry Thief” is introduced in Chapter 5 through Mrs. Watanabe, Marx’s mother. “The Strawberry Thief” is British artist William Morris’s most popular repeating textile design. The actual motif depicts a bird holding a strawberry by its stem in its beak against an ornamental strawberry patch. Morris was inspired to create the design after he found thrushes stealing fruit from his kitchen garden. For Mrs. Watanabe, the fabric print symbolizes the perseverance and artistry of Morris: It took him six years to create using red and yellow dyes against an indigo background. Unlike computer-aided design, which Mrs. Watanabe thinks is easy to attempt, handcrafting a print is far more difficult. Later, Marx has a dream in which his mother, dressed in a strawberry thief-print dress, tells him about the dozens of attempts Morris required to create the print. The narrative suggests that the real artistry in online games lies not just in their design, but in their possibility for infinite recreation. Mapletown needs to be redesigned, just like Morris kept tinkering with his fabric until he got it right. Thus, “The Strawberry Thief” becomes a motif for creativity, as well as a symbol of the infinite lives games offer.

This is why Marx imagines himself as a bird flying over a strawberry patch when he is on the ventilator: One life is over, and another, apart from the body, is about to begin. The bird recurs as a motif for the possibilities offered by video games. Because Marx is a game producer, his mind is wired to consider alternate and infinite new lives. The bird motif recurs in other ways, too. When Marx is in the hospital, his mother, who is wearing a dress printed with birds and strawberries, and his father are making a garland of origami cranes. “It is a Japanese ritual called senbazuru. If you make one thousand paper cranes, you can restore someone to good health” (298). In Japanese culture, the crane symbolizes good luck, health, and longevity. In the novel, birds become a symbol of longevity in the sense of the lives offered by video games and the immortality offered by art.

Sam’s Foot

Sam’s wounded left foot is central to his identity and sense of self for a long time. He first describes it to Sadie as “not even a foot. It’s a flesh bag, with bone chips in it” (16). As time goes on, Sam learns to live with his foot, numbing himself to the chronic pain it causes him. Doctors advise amputating it but Sam resists this. The reasons for this are never explicitly stated in the novel, but it can be inferred that Sam holds onto his damaged foot as a physical relic of the accident that claimed his mother. Secondly, Sam does not want to think of himself as someone with an amputation. He develops a complex relationship with his foot, both seeing it as a symbol of disability and holding onto it. Sam’s complex feelings arise in the context of the larger world’s ignorance and insensitivity towards disability. He hates the idea that people may pity or ridicule him for what he sees as a weakness and thus hides his foot and his pain, even from his friends. When Marx sees Sam’s foot for the first time in years “as Sam took great pains to keep it concealed […] Marx had no idea Sam was even ambulatory” (144). Sam’s foot becomes a symbol of unresolved feelings as well as his inability to accept his condition. It also symbolizes his fear that the people he most loves will not accept him as he is. Even in Pioneers, his avatar, Dr. Daedalus, loses a hand and worries her wife Emily (Sadie) will no longer love him. The foot motif is important in the novel, with Sam serendipitously finding a house near the Happy Foot/Sad Foot sign. Like the logo and the urban legend surrounding it, Sam’s days are governed by how happy or sad—painful or relatively pain-free—his foot feels.

When Sam does undergo the amputation, he develops phantom limb pain, a well-documented and excruciatingly painful syndrome. The pain returns when Marx dies, and Sam terms it a “psychosomatic weathervane” (313); the pain of the lost foot is triggered by a great loss. This shows that the lost foot—symbolizing loss and grief—is never easy to deal with. Nevertheless, once Sam begins to make peace with his amputation, he begins to reinvent himself, symbolizing his complete acceptance of himself. Sam, who once tried to conceal his disability from everyone, “now […] was never photographed without a cane” (258). The cane is no longer medically necessary for Sam, but he uses it anyway to point at things and make grand, dramatic gestures. His avatar Mayor Mazer of Mapletown also sports a cane, showing that Sam no longer considers his disability a flaw to erase, but a characteristic worth replicating. Notably, Sam is the last to accept the presence and then the absence of his foot; Sadie always accepts him as he is, even subconsciously giving the character Ichigo Sam’s gait.