Analysis
The novel employs topics such as the innocence of childhood and its loss, family life (or its absence), class and gender distinctions and education are to be found. Hartley makes great use of symbols (such as the weather, Atropa belladonna, zodiac signs, the colour green and the arrival – and midpoint – of the new century) to highlight the main themes.
- The weather. The slowly escalating heat of the summer may represent the danger of Leo's job as a messenger. The rising mercury of the thermometer in the increasing heat evokes the flight of Mercury, the messenger of the gods: Leo is a messenger for the seemingly divine Marian and Trimingham. Leo enjoys the heat and is unconscious of the danger it poses, like the discovery of the Marian–Ted relationship.
- Atropa belladonna. The plant, commonly known as deadly nightshade, most probably represents Marian: she may be beautiful, but she is poisonous as well. Just as the Marian–Ted relationship has disastrous consequences, the consequences of eating deadly nightshade are catastrophic.
- The zodiac. Leo has an obsession with the characters of the zodiac. Marian and Ted are at one point explicitly described as the Virgin and the Watercarrier (Virgo and Aquarius) and Lord Trimingham may be represented by Sagittarius.
The plot has some parallels to that of the Danish novella, Brudstykker af en Landsbydegns Dagbog (Fragments from a Parish-Clerk's Diary) (1824) by Steen Steensen Blicher. Ian McEwan's novel Atonement (2001) examines some similar themes and has some loose plot similarities.
Read more about this topic: The Go-Between
Famous quotes containing the word analysis:
“Analysis as an instrument of enlightenment and civilization is good, in so far as it shatters absurd convictions, acts as a solvent upon natural prejudices, and undermines authority; good, in other words, in that it sets free, refines, humanizes, makes slaves ripe for freedom. But it is bad, very bad, in so far as it stands in the way of action, cannot shape the vital forces, maims life at its roots. Analysis can be a very unappetizing affair, as much so as death.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)