64 pages • 2 hours read
Douglas WesterbekeA Short Walk Through a Wide World
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A 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
The Puzzle Ball
The puzzle ball symbolizes the mythic call to adventure, as discussed by Joseph Campbell in his concept of the hero’s journey. In The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949), Campbell argues that heroic narratives from many cultures adhere to a similar pattern, of which the call to adventure is one element. The call to adventure is the moment when the protagonist/hero is presented with a task, problem, or quest that will take them far from home and place them in significant danger, during which they will learn something important about themselves or the world. In almost all cases, the hero initially refuses the call, ignoring or rejecting the task until something forces them to face it head-on.
The puzzle ball represents Aubry’s call to adventure. It magically appears before her when she is nine years old. She does not understand its importance and ignores it, going on her way. Then, the puzzle ball seemingly follows her home, demanding her attention. Again, she ignores it, until it finally appears inside her bookbag, at which point she accepts it as a mysterious gift meant specifically for her. Aubry thus follows the established heroic pattern of first refusing the call to adventure and then finally accepting it. This acceptance propels her forward into her dangerous but enlightening adventure. To keep Aubry on the path of adventure and enlightenment, the puzzle ball also occasionally moves autonomously to point her in the right direction.
The Infinite Library
The infinite library symbolizes the history of human experience. When Aubry notes that she does not become sick when she stays in the library, the voice explains that she is right where it wants her to be, “at home with the history of the world” (335). The library is a series of interconnected and labyrinthine rooms that span across the globe in a starburst pattern of entrances and exists. Aubry describes the way each room encapsulates a different region, time period, or culture, such as one that looks like an ancient Egyptian tomb, one like Pompeii filled with lava, and others that inexplicably contain entire grass fields and orchards.
Each room contains countless books filled with pictures that tell stories. Aubry speculates that the library does not contain words because images are more universal and easier to understand than languages. This way, the library can share its history of the world with all visitors no matter the language they speak because, as the Prince speculates, the world wants a witness—or, in this case, a reader. Additionally, the stories captured in these books appear to be strange and magical, just like Aubry’s. Aubry even adds her own story to the collection, implying that every story in the infinite library is as real as Aubry’s has been.
The Sickness
The sickness is the most difficult element of the narrative to adequately label. At first, it appears to be merely a physical illness. However, as the sickness begins to speak to Aubry, first in dreams and then even when she is awake and lucid, it takes on sentience and intent. Aubry calls it a demon that uses her like a vehicle so that it may see the world. Several characters, including Uzair, believe the sickness to be a symptom of mental illness, something that Aubry does to herself. Regardless of its origins, the sickness does function as a countervailing force against the pressures of Aubry’s 19th-century world, in which middle-class women were often expected to live a life of sedentary confinement. In a flashback, Aubry’s father tells her that “things that never move are only half of what they can be” (329). In light of this statement, Aubry’s sickness can be understood as an internal drive to be all that she can be.
Within this fabulist narrative—in which inexplicable things happen to other characters as well as Aubry—the sickness is not a mental illness but a real and sentient force acting on her life for its own purposes. Aubry eventually concludes that it represents the world’s need to be witnessed. Marta, though speaking about herself, argues that some people and stories deserve to be shared and bragged about. Aubry’s sickness represents the world’s desire to brag, suggesting that Marta, too, is part of the world’s plan. Though Aubry is the world’s witness, Marta is the one who shares Aubry’s story with other people. This is supported by several comments that the voice of the sickness makes in Chapter 80, as when it pointedly asks Aubry if she is impressed and adds that it sometimes “forget[s] [its] manners” and wants to “brag about things for a while” (335). The world, feeling that humanity does not pay it the attention it deserves, chooses Aubry to be its witness, sending the puzzle ball as its messenger and the sickness as its motivation.
