64 pages • 2 hours read
Joanne HarrisChocolat
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A 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
Flowers
Harris uses the symbol of flowers to illuminate different characters’ attitudes toward joy and beauty, exploring her theme of Pleasure Versus Denial. Armande and Vianne both appreciate colorful flowers, symbolizing their advocacy for sensory pleasures and their inclination to look outward into the world around them. As with the titular chocolate, characters bond over sharing or gifting each other beautiful flowers, illustrating the power of pleasure to bring community or intergenerational connections. Luc plants flowers for Armande outside her house: “[S]he likes the bright, scented ones best” (252). Narcisse welcomes Vianne by getting her geraniums for her window boxes and gives Josephine “scarlet anemones” as a gesture of support after she leaves Muscat (234). The scarlet color recalls Armande’s underwear, Roux’s hair, and Vianne’s dress, all people with whom Josephine connects after finding her freedom. Red represents passion and sensual pleasure, reflecting her right to these things, rather than her empty life with her husband—when she tries to recall loving him, she says, “[I]t’s all a blank. Nothing there at all” (220).
Reynaud has a complex relationship with flowers. He wants to tame the churchyard, imposing order on it. He is disturbed by the wildness of the plants and dislikes overly scented or colorful flowers. He describes Vianne wearing “wildflower colors” (245), associating her with the vibrancy and sensual joy of these plants, which are beyond his control. He prefers unscented, pale flowers, which he orders from Narcisse, and tries to kill all the weeds. He wants “nature tamed by man” (274). This reflects his relationship to sensory pleasure—as a human, he cannot avoid it entirely and recognizes its value to a degree, but he seeks to control it and limit it, afraid of its consequences due to his experience with his père. It also reflects his desire for control more broadly, as he wants to control the village and remove or suppress anyone who doesn’t conform to his neat ideas about behavior. However, in the first paragraph from his point of view, he tells his père that he hopes he likes the flowers he bought, which “smell wonderful.” Like every character, he appreciates sensory pleasure—but his ability to do so without guilt and repression is tied into his traumatic history with his père.
The Wind and the Wind Song
Harris uses the wind, and the song about the wind, as a recurring symbol of change. Vianne and Anouk arrive in the village on “the wind of the carnival” (17), which is warm and laden with the scent of food, representing optimism about the sensory experiences she brings with her and the ways she will settle into the village. Later, Vianne stands outside in the square in the lively March winds, expressing the changes that are sweeping through the village because of her presence. She enjoys the feeling of it in her hair, while Reynaud clings white-knuckled to the windowsill. Where Vianne feels freedom and joy in sensory experiences and in unpredictable change, Reynaud is unsettled.
However, Vianne also has a complex relationship with the wind. It represents the traveling life she has always lived. Though it may seem like the epitome of freedom, she also feels trapped by it. As the book goes on, she feels more and more pulled to move on with the wind, even though she dreams of staying in the village where she successfully settled and found community. In the face of the wind, her “carefully-built fantasy of permanence is like the sandcastles [she] used to build on the beach” (369). She has inherited this way of life from her mother and struggles to separate her wishes and Anouk’s needs from this.
Roux, Anouk, and Vianne all sing a French folk song about the wind. The verse they sing focuses on a pretty wind blowing, reflecting their itinerant lifestyles and a spirituality or ethos in common. The longer version of this song involves ducks swimming, who are hunted by the king’s son. It laments that girls are sent to the convent and boys to the army and asks what use lots of money is. This again reflects values shared by Vianne and Roux: a wariness of establishment, which seeks to control and exploit, attacking the lifestyle to which they feel connected. Vianne sings the song at the end of the book at Anouk’s request, but she hopes that this time, they might be able to resist its call and stay in the village, symbolizing her growth toward finding her own path.
Fire
Fire is a recurring motif that relates to the Catholic Church and paganism. The young Reynaud and Muscat’s use of fire to destroy the houseboats, and Muscat’s suggestion to set fire to the chocolate shop, is reminiscent of the Church’s historical use of fire as a weapon of suppression, to execute not only witches but also heretics during the Middle Ages and early modern period. This reflects the Bible’s symbolic use of fire to represent God’s judgment and wrath. Reynaud’s description of Vianne also recalls this, placing her in the role of a witch: “She wears a long, flared, flame-colored skirt and a tight black sweater. This colouring looks dangerous, like a snake or a stinging insect, a warning to enemies” (81). He compares the flame color to a snake, hinting that he also connects Vianne to Eve’s original sin.
In Reynaud’s narration, his initial avoidance of acknowledging his role in the 1975 fire reflects his internal repression of his feelings. However, Harris still suggests the connection between fire, his relationship to his père, and his feelings of guilt or being tainted. Reynaud convinces himself, “[S]oon you will awake, healed and purified, and […] mine will be the first name you speak. You see, I do believe in miracles. I, who have passed through fire” (158). Reynaud recalls the Bible’s representation of fire as purifying; for example, “[E]verything that can endure fire, you shall put through the fire, and it shall be clean” (Numbers, 31:23). The word “fire” is a metaphor for a formative and brutal event in Chocolat, but it is also a literal description here.
Reynaud is terrified at witnessing the fire on Roux’s boat and even when he sees Vianne cooking pancakes over a flame, demonstrating the traumatic scars his own act of arson has left on him. He thinks that she is performing a pagan practice, but she is actually preparing food. Something that symbolizes destruction to Reynaud is a source of nourishment and sensory pleasure to Vianne. She also uses candles in ritualistic ways, to cleanse the run-down building when she and Anouk move in and to help Josephine move forward emotionally once she’s left her husband. This reflects the use of flames and fire in human culture to provide warmth and light, a practice that is found in non-Christian practices (such as the many winter festivals of light) but also in Christianity, in which a candle is a symbol of hope and expression of prayer.
However, just as fire as a symbol of light is common across many belief systems, Harris also suggests that the destructive use of fire can be found in Vianne’s pagan frameworks. She deliberately burns the Hermit card as a gesture of aggression toward Reynaud, and when she finds him gorging on her chocolate, she holds the card, implying that her use of fire somehow caused his downfall. Harris takes this motif full circle, as Vianne subverts the idea of a witch being burned and uses Reynaud’s weapon of fire against him.
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