Contents: IntroductionPlot Summary Characters Style Critical Overview Criticism Sources Further Reading |
Themes
Death
The inevitability of separation and loss is a major theme in “Souvenir”. For the six years since her father’s death, the protagonist has sent her mother a Valentine’s Day card, to commemorate the day that her parents always celebrated together in some way. The day after the first Valentine’s Day she forgets to send the card, she learns that her mother might die from a brain tumor. The rituals that serve to maintain human connections are inadequate in the face of inevitable loss.
Cycle of Life
The story ends with Kate and her mother at the top of a Ferris wheel. As the ride began, Kate asks her mother if she is “ready for the big sky.” unwittingly voicing her concerns about her mother’s now precarious hold on life. This unconscious reference suggests the ultimate separation of parent and child by death. Nevertheless, it is important that the scene is a Ferris wheel. This revolving ride suggests the cyclical natural routine of birth and death, degeneration and regeneration. The Ferris wheel’s revolutions take riders on a circular ride through space; riders descend, only to be taken upwards once again. In this story about connections lost to death, this final image of endless revolution suggests that human death is but one stage in a cycle. Human birth, life, and death are all only parts of a ceaseless and larger natural cycle.
Alienation and Loneliness
Alienation and loneliness are themes closely related to that of death. To contemplate the death of a loved one leads to the contemplation of the individual’s isolation as a discrete human consciousness. After Kate’s brother has told her about her mother’s tumor, Kate thinks about how she and her mother each eat many of their meals alone, separated by great distance. She is also stirred to remember an incident from her recent past when she spent a night with a strange man. This night which was supposed to amount to a connection between two individuals turned out to be the opposite. They failed to connect in any meaningful way and the memory is a dismal one.
Media Adaptations
- “Souvenir” was recorded as an audiocassette in 1991, along with excerpts from Machine Dreams, read by Jayne Anne Phillips. Available from American Audio Prose Library.
