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Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm)
What I like about this book is that myriad aspects of it are open to interpretation. Is my view of the conclusion correct? I'm not sure, but I'll share my take on what happens: <spoiler>Peach's name has meaning; it's symbolic. She is young, ripe fruit, and her flesh has been desecrated by her assailant. By ravaging her flesh, the rapist robs her of safety, of sanity, of her sense of being, so that - by the end - she's nothing more than a discarded peach pit. (Her stomach bloating is merely figurative).
In literature, water often symoblises a baptism, a new beginning, or death and rebirth. So there's some murkiness in this finale that sees Peach sinking in a swimming pool. What does the water symoblize for her? Is she succumbing to madness? Is she sinking in death? Or is she finally facing the harshes realities of what happened to her so that she can emerge from the water and start anew?
I don't think Glass is clear on the right answer. By leaving it open-ended, she lets the reader fill in the gaps. And how we, as readers, fill in the blank, says more about us than it does about Peach, so this is a very invasive narrative, one that asks us to examine ourselves as well as Peach's story.</spoiler> Pretty powerful stuff.
In literature, water often symoblises a baptism, a new beginning, or death and rebirth. So there's some murkiness in this finale that sees Peach sinking in a swimming pool. What does the water symoblize for her? Is she succumbing to madness? Is she sinking in death? Or is she finally facing the harshes realities of what happened to her so that she can emerge from the water and start anew?
I don't think Glass is clear on the right answer. By leaving it open-ended, she lets the reader fill in the gaps. And how we, as readers, fill in the blank, says more about us than it does about Peach, so this is a very invasive narrative, one that asks us to examine ourselves as well as Peach's story.</spoiler> Pretty powerful stuff.
Josie
I was exactly the same.
My take on it is that her stomach was bloating because of the stone inside her - as in the stone at the core of a peach.
By the symbolic meaning of that is totally lost on me.
My take on it is that her stomach was bloating because of the stone inside her - as in the stone at the core of a peach.
By the symbolic meaning of that is totally lost on me.
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Mar 16, 2019 09:55PM · flag