Souvenir (Style)

Style

Point of View and Narration

“Souvenir” is narrated in the third person, a narrative form sometimes referred to as omniscient. The narrative voice does not always explicitly describe the thoughts or feelings of the characters; rather, the reader can often judge them by what the characters do or say. Instead of writing “Kate was upset,” the narrator tells the reader that Kate sat “for a long time” over the same cup of coffee, remembering something unpleasant that seems to have no connection to her mother’s illness. The reader surmises her feelings from what is described. On the other hand, when she talks with her mother in the hospital, the narrative recounts that Kate “felt her heart begin to open. . . .”

Foreshadowing

Kate’s thoughts following the Valentine’s Day telephone call to her mother offer instances of foreshadowing, or hints of what is to come in the story. She thinks about the curtains in her mother’s house, all white and identical: “From the street it looked as if the house was always in order.” Later in the story, the reader learns about familial conflicts, disappointments, and missed chances to “settle things.” Other images of white objects, order, and precision are suggestive of the white institutional expanses found in hospitals. Kate muses about a man she slept with whose name she can no longer remember; her mother wakes up in her hospital bed and does not know who Kate is.

Symbolism

The candlestick souvenirs which give this story its name are important symbols in the story. As the narrative progresses, the reader learns that Kate left her hometown only the year before, and against her mother’s wishes. They argued about her leaving, but before her departure they went shopping together. Each bought the other a pewter candlestick as “a souvenir. A reminder. . . .” The word souvenir is taken from the French. In French, as in English, the word signifies an object that embodies special memories. In French it also means memory. Kate finds that her mother has brought other souvenirs with her to the hospital: all of the valentines from her father and from her, baby pictures of Kate and Robert. The actual photographs are indistinct; Kate’s mother calls a childhood memory of Kate’s “a pretty exaggerated picture.”

Illness As Metaphor

The circumstance around which “Souvenir” revolves is the potentially life-threatening illness of the protagonist’s mother. Immediately before this plot development the reader learns that Kate’s mother is diabetic. The description of the mother’s house, with its identical white curtains and its paraphernalia of a diabetic life, brings to mind a hospital room as living space. Or, conceivably, these identical fresh white curtains correspond to the “fleecy clouds” of heaven to which Kate’s mother refers later in the story. These associations, along with Kate’s own paranoid thoughts about an “agent” in her blood “making ready to work against her,” make illness a central metaphor in the story. Illness in “Souvenir” functions as a metaphor for the fragility and mortality of the human being.