The Go-Between

by

L. P. Hartley

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Go-Between makes teaching easy.
The Zodiac Symbol Icon

The zodiac is nothing less than the organizing principle for young Leo’s own personal cosmology. He is intoxicated by its pictograms and links its mystical atmosphere to the anticipation and excitement of the fledgling twentieth century. The figures of the zodiac offer Leo an opportunity to construct his own ideas about morality and the supernatural; frankly, he doesn’t know that much about them, but the suggestive power of their individual identities—The Water-Carrier, The Lion, The Virgin, and so on—makes them the perfect material for an imaginative and sensitive young boy to construct his belief system.

The only problem is, the real world doesn’t conform as neatly to the zodiac as he would like. He, for example, feels that as a Leo—both in name and star sign—should be expressly lion-like, leading a brave life and ruling over territory with his physical dominance. On the contrary, it’s patently clear that Leo can’t dominate anyone or anything physically (which explains the reliance on magic). Marian, on the other hand, who even has the “curls and tresses” of the Virgin on his 1900 diary, fails to live up to the virginal qualities of purity and holiness that Leo expects of her. So traumatic is the sight of his Virgin figure in the act of making love—with the farmer-like Water-Carrier, Ted—that Leo never gets over it, shutting down his imaginative and emotional life from that moment on. The zodiac thus ultimately represents Leo’s attempt to understand the world as both orderly and magical, and the shattering disappointment he feels when he discovers that it is neither.

The Zodiac Quotes in The Go-Between

The The Go-Between quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Zodiac. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Social Class and Hierarchy Theme Icon
).
Prologue  Quotes

And the expansion and ascension, of some divine gas, which I believed to be the ruling principle of my own life, I attributed to the coming century. The year 1900 had an almost mystical appeal for me; I could hardly wait for it: “Nineeteen hundred, nineteen hundred,” I would chant to myself in rapture; and as the old century drew to its close, I began to wonder whether I should live to see its successor.

Related Characters: Leo Colston (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Zodiac
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:

If my twelve-year-old self, of whom I had grown rather fond, thinking about him, were to reproach me: “Why have you grown up such a dull dog, when I gave you such a good start? Why have you spent your time in dusty libraries, cataloguing other people’s books instead of writing your own? What has become of the Ram, the Bull, and the Lion, the example I gave you to emulate? Where above all is the Virgin, with her shining face and long curling tresses, whom I entrusted to you”—what should I say?

I should have an answer ready. “Well, it was you who let me down, and I will tell you how. You flew too near to the sun, and you were scorched. This cindery creature is what you made me.

Related Characters: Leo Colston (speaker), Marian Maudsley
Related Symbols: The Zodiac
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

My spiritual transformation took place in Norwich: it was there that, like an emerging butterfly, I was first conscious of my wings. I had to wait until tea for the public acknowledgement of my apotheosis. My appearance was greeted with cries of acclaim, as if the whole party had been living for this moment. Instead of gas-jets, fountains of water seemed to spring up around me. I was made to stand on a chair and revolve like a planet, while everything of my new outfit that was visible was subjected to admiring or facetious comment.

Related Characters: Leo Colston (speaker), Marian Maudsley
Related Symbols: The Zodiac, The Heat / The Thermometer, Green
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7  Quotes

I was in love with the heat, I felt for it what the convert feels for his new religion…And without my being aware of it, the climate of my emotions had undergone a change. I was no longer satisfied with the small change of experience which had hitherto contented me. I wanted to deal in larger sums. I wanted to enjoy continuously the afflatus of spirit that I had when I was walking to Lord Trimingham and he admitted to being a Viscount. To be in tune with all that Brandham Hall meant, I must increase my stature, I must act on a grander scale. Perhaps all these desires had been dormant in me for years, and the Zodiac had been their latest manifestation.

Related Characters: Leo Colston (speaker), Lord Trimingham the Ninth Viscount / Hugh
Related Symbols: The Zodiac, The Heat / The Thermometer
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8  Quotes

The messenger of the gods! I thought of that, and even when the attention of the gods had been withdrawn from me, it seemed to enhance my status. I pictured myself threading my way through the Zodiac, calling on one star after another.

Related Characters: Leo Colston (speaker), Lord Trimingham the Ninth Viscount / Hugh
Related Symbols: The Zodiac
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10  Quotes

My world of high intense emotions collapsing around me, released not only the mental strain but the very high physical pressure under which I had been living. My only defence was, I could not have expected it of Marian. Marian who had done so much for me, Marian who knew how a boy felt, Marian the Virgin of the Zodiac—how could she have sunk so low?

Related Characters: Leo Colston (speaker), Marian Maudsley, Ted Burgess
Related Symbols: The Zodiac
Page Number: 102
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

“No, you shall come,” she said, and seized my hand, and it was then we saw them, together on the ground, the Virgin and the Water-Carrier, two bodies moving like one. I think I was more mystified than horrified; it was Mrs. Maudsley’s repeated screams that frightened me, and a shadow on the wall that opened and closed like an umbrella.

Related Characters: Leo Colston (speaker), Mrs. Maudsley (speaker), Marian Maudsley, Ted Burgess
Related Symbols: The Zodiac
Page Number: 244
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Go-Between LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Go-Between PDF

The Zodiac Symbol Timeline in The Go-Between

The timeline below shows where the symbol The Zodiac appears in The Go-Between. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Prologue 
Coming of Age and Trauma Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
...diary—it’s for the year 1900. The year is ornately decorated by the signs of the Zodiac, a cosmology that held considerable power over him as a young boy. Leo remembers the... (full context)
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
Love, Sex, and Marriage Theme Icon
Leo describes the different zodiac signs on the diary. He sees the Ram, Bull, and Lion as representing “imperious manhood,”... (full context)
Masculinity Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
Love, Sex, and Marriage Theme Icon
One aspect of the zodiac was jarring for young Leo: he couldn’t identify with the symbol that was supposed to... (full context)
Coming of Age and Trauma Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
...to share its contents. The diary’s frontispiece would frequently send him into daydreams about the zodiac and the twentieth century to come. (full context)
Social Class and Hierarchy Theme Icon
Coming of Age and Trauma Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
...his school). The people at Brandham intimidated him then and still do now: “they had zodiacal properties and proportions. They were, in fact, the substance of my dreams, the realization of... (full context)
Chapter 3
Coming of Age and Trauma Theme Icon
Masculinity Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
...to be on the twenty-seventh of that month. Leo tells Marian he was born under the sign of Leo , and that his name is actually Lionel. She jokingly suggests that she could buy... (full context)
Chapter 4
Coming of Age and Trauma Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
Love, Sex, and Marriage Theme Icon
...and comes up to Leo. Her hair is coiled up like the Virgin of the Zodiac in Leo’s diary. She asks Leo whether “that man”—Ted—has gone. Leo asks if she knows... (full context)
Chapter 6 
Coming of Age and Trauma Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
As sunlight fills the church, Leo thinks about the Zodiac. He then turns his thoughts to “being good,” which his mother often tells him to... (full context)
Chapter 7 
Social Class and Hierarchy Theme Icon
Coming of Age and Trauma Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
...of his emotions has undergone a change.” He now feels that he belongs to “The Zodiac, not to Southdown School,” which he credits to the company he is keeping. In order... (full context)
Coming of Age and Trauma Theme Icon
Love, Sex, and Marriage Theme Icon
Marcus isn’t around, and neither are any of the adults (“the companions of the Zodiac”). Left to his own devices, Leo decides to take the path that heads towards the... (full context)
Chapter 8 
Social Class and Hierarchy Theme Icon
Coming of Age and Trauma Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
...is excited by this description of himself: “I pictured myself threading my way through the zodiac, calling on one star after another: a delicious waking dream.” He then falls asleep. Waking... (full context)
Chapter 10 
Social Class and Hierarchy Theme Icon
Coming of Age and Trauma Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
Love, Sex, and Marriage Theme Icon
...and Ted were in love. He would never have expected “Marian the Virgin of the Zodiac” to “sink so low” as to be “soft” and “soppy.” Leo thrusts the letter deep... (full context)
Chapter 20
Social Class and Hierarchy Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
Love, Sex, and Marriage Theme Icon
...who has abused Leo’s trust and manipulated him, but once again like “Marian of the Zodiac, Marian whom I loved.” (full context)
Chapter 23
Coming of Age and Trauma Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
Love, Sex, and Marriage Theme Icon
...she persists. Suddenly they come across Marian and Ted making love: “together on the ground, the Virgin and the Water-Carrier , two bodies like one.” Mrs. Maudsley screams repeatedly as the lovers’ shadow opens and... (full context)
Epilogue
Coming of Age and Trauma Theme Icon
Fate, Myth, and Magic Theme Icon
...Brandham Hall, he had “invoked these powers against each other, had tried to set the Zodiac against itself. In my eyes the actors in my drama had been immortals, inheritors of... (full context)