38 pages • 1 hour read
Catherine NewmanWe All Want Impossible Things
Catherine NewmanFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Fiddler on the Roof
In the very first chapter, another resident of the hospice center, Ruth, plays the movie musical Fiddler on the Roof from her room down the hallway loud enough for the whole floor to hear. Throughout the novel, at various moments, Ash, who is narrating the story, will comment on hearing the musical, which becomes a kind of soundtrack to her time at Shapely. Even after Ruth dies two-thirds of the way through the story, Ash continues to think of the songs and events of the movie. The final page of the novel, in fact, contains a reference to one of the key moments in the film where the main couple—Tevye and Golde—sing a song entitled “Do You Love Me?” to one another. Imagining the rest of her life without Edi, Ash pictures Honey singing the song to her as she cries and rests in his embrace.
Flashbacks as Interpretive Keys
The first-person narrative perspective allows Ash’s inner thoughts to be narrated at length in each chapter, which makes the reader aware of Ash’s memories of various people and events that happen to be triggered by particular events in the present day. On the one hand, this would be expected in a novel told from a particular person’s point of view. On the other hand, however, the memories and flashbacks don’t function purely as memories; they serve as interpretive keys for Ash’s reactions in the present day.
The breathing exercise led by the hospital chaplain, for instance, triggers a memory of her own daughter’s first breath after being born. In the flow of the narrative this is not just a memory, but a door into Ash’s anxiety about the human condition and mortality. She reflects on how this first breath will be paired one day with a last breath, and that she feels it is not something she can handle. In the end she gets ahold of her emotions, but the memory serves as a catalyst for emotional growth. At many other points throughout the novel, Ash’s current circumstances will trigger a memory that will then provide insight on the words or actions that follow, allowing the reader to gain a greater sense of clarity on the cause of Ash’s words, actions, mood swings, or emotional responses.
Food as a Grounding Experience
Food is a universal human experience, and in literature it often symbolizes an act of communion. It is fitting, therefore, that throughout the novel the giving and sharing of food would play such an important part in bringing people together and providing small moments of joy and companionship amidst the suffering and pain they all share by participating in Edi’s journey toward her final end. Honey always seems to bring food to Ash’s house when he comes to spend time with her and Belle, and he regularly brings food to Shapely as well, for them to share with Edi as they spend time with her and care for her. Ash is often refilling Edi’s water bottle, and even spends a good part of the novel trying to find an old lemon cake recipe that Edi had once loved.
Even in the wake of Edi’s death, there is an acknowledgment of hunger, and the group of friends and family reconvene at Ash’s house to share a late-night breakfast together before falling asleep as the sun rises. From beginning to end, the presence of food is noted and commented on, and provides one of the few normal experiences that everyone can share together in the wake of such abnormal and trying circumstances.
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