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Similes
Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—Beauty and Grief:
Throughout their journey to the United States, Lydia and Luca struggle to reconcile the beauty that they see with the trauma of the experience. Cummins positions this dilemma as situational irony, as the beauty is in conflict with their trauma. In Chapter 15, she writes:
It’s overwhelming, to be in a beautiful, festive place like this. Lydia is overcome by guilt. Because it feels incongruous and seductive and wrong to witness the simple charm of a pretty place. She can see that same kind of notion land across Luca’s features, and she reaches for his hand. His mind does his awful thing to remind him not to be enchanted: it floods him with the helpful memory of all his dead family […]. Everyone gone. Luca is gone with them for a moment […].
Lydia and Luca are in the immediate aftermath of losing their entire family in a massacre. And, additionally, they are in the midst of a horrible journey—one that exposes them to even more death and suffering. And, yet, impossibly, they witness moments of intense beauty on that horrible journey. In this scene, they are witnessing not only natural beauty but also the joy of others. Lydia and Luca both find it hard to grasp that such beauty and joy could exist at this moment in their lives. It feels wrong to them to experience that joy: so wrong that Luca's mind conjures memories of the massacre "to remind him not to be enchanted." As they continue with their lives, Lydia and Luca must grapple with this coexistence of joy and pain.
Related Themes:
