Alcestis
Alcestis, Alicia Berenson’s self-portrait based on Euripides’s play of the same name, symbolizes the great pain that can result from betrayal—and the impossibility of putting that pain into words. In the play, an…
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Snow
In Alex Michaelides’s novel The Silent Patient, snow symbolizes the great difficulty of finding peace and happiness after childhood trauma. At the beginning of the novel, narrator Theo Faber describes a fleeting moment of joy…
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Cigarettes
The entire profession of talk therapy is built around the idea that there are clear lines of separation between patients and their therapists—but in The Silent Patient, cigarettes (and cigars) demonstrate how those lines…
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