48 pages • 1 hour read
Ann PatchettRun
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A 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
“I did not see…”
Variations on the phrase “I did not see…” support the novel’s theme of Awareness of Privilege, particularly the theme’s associations with Bernard Doyle and Teddy’s obliviousness about Kenya and Tennessee’s underprivileged lives. This motif initially appears in Chapter 3 following the car accident and is first associated with the man who hits Tennessee with his SUV: “Over and over again, he said, ‘I didn’t see her. I didn’t see her’ […] the one who Did Not See Her, just stood there repeating the only sentence he knew” (42). This motif signals a character’s unawareness of something, particularly something that they could and should have noticed but do not until it suddenly confronts or challenges them. As the story unfolds, the stranger’s phrase recurs and develops the theme of Awareness of Privilege through Doyle and Teddy. Ann Patchett uses this motif to illuminate the initial shock and subsequently uncomfortable steps that characters experience as they become more aware of their privilege.
Doyle says that he was “in a state of complete oblivion to their [Kenya and Tennessee’s] presence” in the Cathedral project near his wealthy neighborhood: “They could have brushed past him in the aisles of the grocery store or stood beside him on the train and it never would have mattered,” because he would not have seen them (179). Caught in the rounds of his day-to-day life, Doyle knows that he would not have spotted the woman resembling his adoptive sons. Teddy has a similar reaction when he realizes that he never noticed Tennessee working at his Uncle’s care home: “‘I never saw her there.’ He panicked at the thought. He couldn’t have missed her at Regina Cleri! He felt he could not endure such a failure, that he missed his own mother in the place that he went to day after day” (275). Like the stranger who hits Tennessee with his Chevy Tahoe because he “didn’t see” her, when confronted with their privilege, Doyle and Teddy also experience shock. However, unlike the minor figure who introduces this motif, Patchett’s main characters grow past these initial jolts to become more aware and help Kenya.
Virgin Mary Statue
Bernadette’s stories about the statue in Chapter 1 are associated with deception, jealousy, and selfishness. Through the ownership of Doyle and Kenya, the statue of the Virgin Mary comes to stand for warmer qualities of love, comfort, and peace.
The statue does not appear frequently in the novel after Chapter 1; however, when it does, it holds positive significance for Doyle and Teddy. For Doyle, the statue not only symbolizes Bernadette; it also recalls for him many happy memories of Tip and Teddy’s youth. As young boys who recently lost their mother, praying for Bernadette to the statue became a comforting, nightly routine in which Doyle would lead them: “‘Say a prayer for your mother, boys,’ Doyle said at the door, and then he said the words with them: ‘Grant eternal rest unto her soul, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon her’” (91). As a 10-year-old boy, Teddy prayed so often to the statue that Doyle thought that he needed professional help for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Teddy took such comfort in the ritualistic practice of praying for his mother to the statue that it sparked his interest in learning more about Bernadette, leading to his close relationship with Uncle Sullivan.
Kenya is less familiar with the Virgin Mary heirloom, encountering it for the first time at the end of Chapter 4 when she sees it atop a dresser in Tip and Teddy’s childhood room. Despite her having experienced a very traumatizing event, she notes: “It was a comfort sleeping beneath that watchful eye. The woman on the dresser made everything peaceful and quiet” (158). When the statue and the bedroom becomes her own at the end of the novel, Kenya hangs a picture of her mother next to the statue, reinforcing its signification of love, peace, and comfort. The symbolic meanings of the statue hence signal the character development of the Doyle family as a whole.
Snow
The bulk of Patchett’s Run is set in the metro Boston area during winter. Patchett uses unpredictable New England snowstorms to symbolize dark emotions like annoyance, fear, and Doyle’s inner “viciousness” toward Tennessee in Chapter 4 (78). However, Patchett also expands snow’s significance as her narrative unfolds and characters develop; following Kenya’s introduction into the Doyles’ lives, snow becomes associated with innocence and beauty. Like the statue, its symbolic meanings develop as the Doyle family develops.
Early in the novel, snow symbolizes a wintery mood of coldness and isolation. In Chapter 2, for instance, Tip muses about a snowstorm trapping him in his ichthyology lab and preventing him from attending a boring lecture with Doyle: “How much better the night would have been if the sky had thrown down the bank of snow that was predicted and locked him in with the fishes” (18). Snow is also associated early in the novel with fear, causing the car accident that gravely injures Tennessee.
As her main characters begin to grow in their relationships with Kenya, Patchett expands snow’s symbolic associations. Following Chapter 4, snow’s significance begins to include Kenya’s innocence and her appreciation of beauty. For example, as she walks with Doyle to her run-down housing project in Chapter 7, she says: “It looks pretty in the snow, sort of like everything’s been painted” (185). Kenya’s view of the snow’s beautifying effect transforms its associations; the cause of the previous night’s trauma becomes a blanket-like covering that seems to revamp her own neighborhood. Thus, Patchett not only uses snow to emblematize the city’s or people’s coldness; she uses it to highlight Kenya’s characterization and the positive influence that her perspective has on the Doyle family.
Related Titles
By Ann Patchett
