We can say that Cecelia Ahern is ‘painting’ the
world of today in a realistic manner showing how society is nowadays and what
is important in today society.
The theme of marriage takes another aspect. It is
not necessary to marry at a certain age and it is allowed to live together with
the person you love without getting married. Lucy has almost 30 years, but she
is not married and when she had a relationship with Blake, they lived together
many years. There is also presented the concept that a woman, nowadays, has to
have a career before getting married and having children: “- They have careers now, you see…” [1] Lucy’s parents decide to renew the
wedding vows. It is a ceremony that is the old Celtic tradition that binds two
people together, it is like the matrimony. People usually decide to renew their
wedding vows if there was a period in which they were separated for a while or
they had some misunderstandings and they desire to reconcile through renewing the
wedding vows. As the case of Lucy’s parents who seems to have some problems and
misunderstanding. At a certain moment, Lucy’s mother, Sheila, came to her
crying and saying that she can’t stand her husband anymore and that the
renewing wedding vows were canceled and Sheila said that she married once, but
she can’t do it again, for the second time. In the end the renewing wedding
vows takes place and everyone is pleased and happy.
Love also takes a different aspect. It is not
necessary to be in love with someone in order to spend a night together. Lucy
met a guy, Alex Buckley, in a pub. She liked his necklace and he told her that
he thinks he has a problem with her eyes because he can’t stop watching at
them. Alex offered her many drinks and then she went to his home and spent the
night together. Lucy also spent a night together with Melanie’s cousin, Bobby,
when it was the 21st birthday party and Lucy slept there over night;
and with Don when she actually saw him for the first time. We also have a love
story between two lesbians. Lucy’s friend, Melanie, had a relationship with
Mariza, a Spanish girl, who made Melanie suffer a lot.
The most important aspect of the novel is the truth.
We can say that it is also an educative novel heaving a very important moral.
Nowadays sincerely people are almost gone, everyone lie everyone. Cecelia Ahern
shows us that a little lie brings after her other lies making us to live in ‘a
sea of lies’ which we can’t escape and its solution is telling the truth. We
can say that the moral can be ‘telling the truth is better than lying.’
Ahern also presents the gap between generations
which is a very ordinary thing nowadays. The relationship between Lucy and her
parents is not a good one, especially with her father: “in truth, he can barely stand me nor I him. But we do stand each
other, just about enough, somewhere on the cusp of standing each other for the
sake of world peace.”[2] Lucy’s
father is very disappointed because she told him that she leaved office. He
said about her that she is never happy to work, she is lazy and she is a
disappointment and an abashment for her family. As many parents, Lucy’s father
wants what is better for her daughter and for him is more important what he
wants to be her daughter than what she desires. Though Lucy didn’t agree at the
beginning and got upset when she found out, her mother signed the papers for
Life because she wanted what is best for her daughter and she thought that he
would help her and so it was.
Cecelia Ahern uses the symbol of The Triple Spiral, also
called The Triple Spiral of Life which is an ancient Celtic symbol. It is drawn
on a single line that has no beginning and no ending which represent the
movement of life. The Celts believed that there are three phases such as birth,
death and rebirth in which take place all important thinks. It may also refer
to mind, body, and spirit. “In this
world, we are all connected, interact and inter-depend on each other; no
phenomenon can exist by itself. Our life exists within the cycle of cause and
effect.”[3]
The theme of social class relates the fact that, nowadays, it is still
important to have a name:
“My family belonged to a very
serious religion called the Church of Social Etiquette. The heads of their
church were People. As in, every action acted and word spoken was done on the
basis of what would ‘People’ think?”[4]
Being an important and well known high court judge,
for her father was important the name of the family and it was also important
that his children to become important persons in life. He taught them and
Sheila some ‘rules’, that are very important for a Silchester, such as even if
the person who visits Silchester family (though it was a member of the family)
must bring a present; a Silchester doesn’t refuses invitations because it was
considered a rude gesture; in Silchester family the tone of the voice is never
raised; a Silchester doesn’t cry (this ‘rule’ told Lucy’s father to her when
she was five and she fell down from her bicycle), doesn’t speak with mouth full
of food; Silchester family doesn’t ignore people, doesn’t make tragedies from
anything and doesn’t provoke any ado and many other such rules.
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