The character of Lucy
Lucy Silchester is the main character of the novel. When
she has to go to meet her Life, she thinks to describe herself as being an
intelligent, spiritual, wonderful, elegant, charming and desirable woman: “I wanted my life to know that I had it all
together, that everything was under control.”[1] But,
Lucy is not as she describes herself. She is better described by her Life and
her father. Actually, she is a person whose commitment is missing; is
ineffective; she wastes her time; she never finishes anything except a bottle
of wine or a chocolate bar; she often changes her mind; she doesn’t take in
hand; she leaves every time before a meeting, dinner or birthday party was
over. And she doesn’t know what she wants in life, she has no dreams; when Life
asked what she desires, she told him that she doesn’t know. Lucy is also a lazy
person as she didn’t cleaned her boots which were covered of mud since three
years.
Lucy is a liar. Lucy doesn’t lie only her family and
her friends but also herself. She created a world for herself, a world full of
lies and though she knows that she lives in an imaginary world and that is not
true what she is saying; she doesn’t stop, she continues lying even herself and
seems to prefer this fact because everything is how she wants to be; she can be
whoever she wants by lying. It is easier to live in many lies than to dare the
truth. She refuses to see the reality and maybe she is afraid to dare it. Lucy
finds herself in that moment in which she needs help, she needs to be ‘saved’.
The lie is almost as a drogue; it is enough to lie just once in order to become
dependent. As Life told Lucy, the problem is that her lies are built up oven
other lies. If you say a lie, you have to say also the second one because if
you reveal just a little truth everything breakdown. After such many lies,
Lucy’s solution to take the right way is Life who starts sending her letters
that Lucy ignored:
“I’d ignored
it…But I hadn’t really forgotten about it. You never forget about things you’ve
done that you know you shouldn’t have done…The bad thing that you did, always there to
let you know.”[2]
Lucy ignored her Life; she thought that she has no
problem and didn’t understand why her Life insists, so she decides to set an
appointment because she realizes that she neglected her Life and it, now, it
needs her; she was busy with other things such as her friends’ lives, her job,
her car: “It was going through a tough
time and I hadn’t been paying enough attention to it…I’d completely and utterly
ignored my life. I had to go and meet with it face-to-face.”[3]
She realizes that this situation will ask her a special attention.
Lucy started to lie when she was left by her
boyfriend, Blake. They lived together a few years until Blake left her and she
was bound to move alone in a small apartment. Blake came with the idea that
they should tell to everyone that Lucy was the one who left him. As we can see,
Lucy was fooled by him and she was seen as being the bad one and their friends
didn’t understand why she left him and they think that she was juggling him. It
was enough a little lie that Lucy’s life be balls up. She lied her parents
about the other job that she had telling them that she leaved the office when
actually she was deprived because she was drunk and had to take a client from
the airport. Lucy got lost and she brought the client to another hotel than to
the one which had to. Thus, she was deprived and her driver license was frozen
for one year. Another lie that Lucy tells is that she knows Spanish. That was
the requirement (to know Spanish) in order to get the job, so Lucy lies in her
CV that she knows Spanish. She had to translate the manuals for different
appliances. Lucy lies to Don about her name telling him that her name is
Gertrude, but she cannot lie him about the other things; and she doesn’t
recognize that she has a cat. It was not allowed to have animals in the
building where she lived and she lies the landlord that she doesn’t have any
animal.
At the beginning, Lucy also lies to Life. He asked
her if she ever was to a psychotheraphy meeting. First, she said that she
wasn’t and Life looked at her in an aquiline manner and she had to recognize,
but also by adding another lie: “- Yes.
Once. When I quite my job. It was around the time I dumped my boyfriend and
bought a new apartment.”[4]
Whatever she says, she cannot lie to Life because he knows everything about her
and what she did and was doing: “- You
were fired. Your boyfriend left you and you’re renting a studio.”[5]
Life told her to speak about her job and she keeps lying. Lucy tells him
that she loves her job, she likes to work with people and to commune with the
public and she works with people that inspire her not only in job but also in
life. Every time Lucy lies to him, Life tells her which is the truth.
In order to ‘save’ Lucy, make her stop lying; Life
decides to move with Lucy and to go with her wherever she goes. She must be
very carefully what she is saying because every time she says a lie, her Life
will tell the truth. If Lucy tries to change herself and to collaborate
everything will be easier: “-It would
help the whole process if you didn’t lie to me.”[6]
Lucy finally accept and she even gets accustomed with Life being sad at the end
of the novel when he leaves because he finished his ‘mission’. Life was,
indeed, the solution for Lucy’s problem as he succeeded in changing her. If
Blake was the ‘negative’ character who balls up Lucy’s life, Life is the one
who brought Lucy on the right way. Lucy stops lying and the day in which she
got 30 years brought with it a new Lucy: she started cooking again as in those
times in which she lived with Blake; cleaned her boots and was determined to
speak with her friends and tell them everything, to find a new job that she
would like and she realized that she needs Don. Lucy is, now, ready to make the
necessary changes in her life.
Lucy’s evolution is seen through the character of
Life who at the beginning is described by Lucy as being a disheveled person:
“He wore a
wrinkled gray suit, a gray shirt and a gray tie with the triple spirals of life
embossed on it. His hair was black and peppered with a little gray and was
disheveled; his face had a few days of stubble…He had black rings around his
eyes, his eyes were bloodshot, he sniffled and he looked like he hadn’t slept
for years,”[7]
and he had a bad breath. He is disheveled as Lucy’s
life is and along the novel as Lucy progresses in changing herself; Life also
changes, his bad breath disappears and he starts to be neat. This fact
illustrates that Lucy is on the right way and she doesn’t lie anymore.
[1] Cecelia Ahern,
The Time of my Life, HarperCollins, 2013
(chapter 5, page 19)
[2] Cecelia Ahern,
The Time of my Life, HarperCollins, 2013
( chapter 1, page 1-12)
[3] Cecelia Ahern,
The Time of my Life, HarperCollins,
2013 (chapter 1, page 14)
[4] Cecelia Ahern,
The Time of my Life, HarperCollins,
2013 (chapter 5, page 51)
[5] Cecelia Ahern,
The Time of my Life, HarperCollins,
2013 (chapter 5, page 51)
[6] Cecelia Ahern,
The Time of my Life, HarperCollins,
2013 (chapter 5, page 51)
[7] Cecelia Ahern,
The Time of my Life, HarperCollins,
2013 (chapter 5, page 48)
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