53 pages • 1 hour read
Steven RowleyThe Guncle Abroad
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.
Themes
The Tension of Aging
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses anti-gay bias.
As a sequel, The Guncle Abroad follows Patrick and his family five years after the events of The Guncle. Each character is not only older but also in a new part of their life. Many of the characters, and particularly Patrick, struggle to accept how aging shapes and changes their lives and relationships with others. For Patrick, nearing 50, aging means facing uncharted waters. He is not only single again for the first time in years but also uncertain of what to do with his life. The text partly attributes this to personal matters and partly to systemic anti-gay bias. He feels a lack of guidance, with no role models to base his life path off of: “Part of the problem was that he didn’t know who he wanted to be next. He did his best to explain. Not only was there not much of a career model for a gay man of fifty to follow, there wasn’t much of a life model” (30). This suggests that the tension of aging disproportionately affects marginalized groups, as Patrick tries to carve out a midlife path as a gay man. This is reinforced by Clara’s reference to menopause in Chapter 15, which suggests that the aging experience is affected by sex and gender as well as sexuality.
Patrick’s uncertainty about his career trajectory at this age is reflected in his personal life. His breakup with Emory leaves him alone at a time during which he craves companionship and support. The loneliness Patrick feels is worsens as he reflects on the uncertainty of what he wants the rest of his life to be like. The text’s conflict around the breakup exemplifies the tension of aging, as Patrick believes that aging will make him undesirable. Their marriage ultimately conveys the message that this is untrue and that people shouldn’t fight the inevitability of aging.
These feelings are further amplified by his changing relationship with Grant and Maisie. Grant and Maisie also deal with growing pains. As they age, they not only face puberty but also the continued grief stemming from the loss of their mother. This puts them at odds with their soon-to-be stepmother Livia, driving much of the conflict in The Guncle Abroad. Their struggles impact their relationship with Patrick, and Patrick must come to terms with the fact that the small children he thought he knew are growing into independent teenagers. Patrick finds himself not ready for Grant and Maisie to change, often caught off guard by changes he sees in them because they are “growing into different people” (216). As they grow up, people around them learn to accept that children age as well as adults and that this fact shouldn’t be resisted, either.
The Persistence of Grief
Grief is the primary theme of The Guncle, and the grief that Patrick, Maisie, Grant, and their family experiences over the losses of Patrick’s partner Joe, and the children’s mother, Sara, persists throughout The Guncle Abroad. In The Guncle, Patrick teaches Maisie and Grant how to live with and begin to heal from a traumatic loss, but in this sequel, it is clear that grief is always present even as time passes. Patrick is honest with Maisie and Grant throughout the novel that they will live with the grief of losing their mother for their entire lives. He speaks from experience, frequently feeling the loss of Joe, even after he once again has a serious relationship: “It doesn’t end. Not really. […] But here’s the good news. You get so much stronger” (9). Patrick accepts his grief and recognizes that he has grown because of it. He understands that he must move forward, though this does not mean forgetting the person whom he lost. He relays this to Grant and Maisie, encouraging them to not hide from their grief but live with it and grow from it, even as the distance from the initial loss lengthens.
Patrick speaks to Grant and Maisie about how grief transforms over time. With time comes distance from the loss of their mother, and Patrick warns them that this will generate a new kind of grief. He suggests that the pain of the immediate loss marks a closeness to their mother that will fade with time. The grief will still be there, but clear memories of their mother will not be. Patrick realizes on their trip that Sara’s death is no longer recent, and Maisie and Grant are leaving behind the childhood over which Sara had an influence: “Patrick remembered telling them once that one day they would miss the acute pain of grief, the grief that meant their mother was still close. He had a hard time acknowledging that time was here, or understanding how five years had already passed” (87). Patrick understands that Maisie and Grant’s suspicions of Livia and their unwillingness to move on stems from this new grief. They miss their mother and are afraid to keep moving forward, farther away from her memory. Rowley hence conveys that grief changes but never goes away as people heal.
The Impact of Love on Self-Perception
Just as grief dominates much of The Guncle Abroad, so too does love influence the characters and their actions. Patrick makes it his mission early on to teach Grant and Maisie about love and how it influences people and their relationships with others. Love can impact how people view and treat each other, as well as how people see themselves. Patrick’s experience with love and its impact on self-perception not only stems from his own romantic relationships with Joe and Emory but also from experiencing Greg and Sara fall in love: “Overnight he had gone from being Greg’s brother and Sara’s best friend to being an unwelcome third wheel in their presence” (60). When Greg and Sara fell in love, Patrick’s long-standing relationships with each of them changed. He went from being a brother and best friend to being an outsider. This impacted how he viewed his importance in the lives of the people he cares about and contributed to friction in his relationship with Sara. The love that Greg and Sara shared caused Patrick to see himself as less important.
Though love can sometimes negatively affect relationships, Patrick makes it clear to Grant, Maisie, and others, that love has the power to strengthen one’s self-perception and trigger growth through difficult times. When Patrick meets Emory, he once again falls in love and begins living life anew, rebooting his acting career, reconnecting with his family, and moving into the future, growing from grief. Patrick highlights the importance of Emory’s love in his vows at their wedding: “I finally moved, not on, but forward” (274). Their love allows Patrick to see himself as someone strong enough to move forward in life, no longer weighed down by tragedy and grief. It instills Patrick with a new drive and confidence that he lacked before. At the end of The Guncle Abroad, Patrick understands that it is through his love for Emory that he can best understand himself and what he wants.
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By Steven Rowley
