The Paper Palace

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Symbols & Motifs

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Symbols & Motifs

Water

Water is a symbol of both death and comfort for the narrator in The Paper Palace. The novel opens with Elle entering water trying to find peace and clarity. She wants to be absolved of guilt and to get away from her regrets in life. She goes to the water for a source of comfort, but she also knows it is a place of danger and death. When she was a child, she witnessed a friend drown in the pond, and she heard of Joanne’s father drowning. This is important because Conrad’s death is also through drowning. Elle has an opportunity to save Conrad, but she and Jonas make the choice not to throw him the life preserver. Conrad’s death is foreshadowed when Elle flippantly remarks that he should go for a swim because it’s a perfect day to drown.

Elle imagines a shark in the water while Peter and her kids are swimming in the ocean. There is a fear of danger in the water with the shark, but Elle also imagines that she is capable of saving or not saving the people in the water. She feels unsure about whether she would save Peter, exhibiting the significance of water in her life as well as manifesting the theme of protection in the novel.

Elle is simultaneously obsessed and fascinated by the water. Because of her part in Conrad’s death, she feels a control over the water, while also fearing what she is capable of. For example, when she goes swimming, she imagines what it would be like to drown, thinking, “to sink down into the underneath, trying to fight back to the surface, drink in water as if it were air” (114). It is both frightening and calming to Elle to be pulled under by the water, symbolizing the weight of all the hardship in her life.

Furthermore, at the end of the novel when Elle has made her decision to stay with Peter, she goes into the shower with the hope that it will cleanse her of everything. She says, “I step into the shower, stand under the hot, gushing water, hoping it will drown out my guttural animal sobs, my salted-would despair, begging the water to make me clean, to scald away the past” (355).

The Paper Palace

Most of the novel is set in the backwoods of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and Elle’s family has a camp on the edge of a pond. The camp is ironically called the “Paper Palace” because, when Elle’s grandfather was building it, he ran out of money and built the ceiling and inner walls out of particle board. Even though the camp is rundown and decaying, they refer to it as a palace made out of paper. It symbolizes the flimsy foundation on which Elle’s life is built. Even though it is a “a decaying slum” (282), it is Elle’s favorite place on earth. She loves it because of its familiarity and because she doesn’t have to hide anything from it. She compares herself to the Paper Palace in that she, too, shouldn’t be able to withstand the difficult periods of her life, yet she does: “This house, built out of paper […] always threatening to fall to ruin, yet still standing, year after year, when we return. This house, this place, knows all my secrets. I am in its bones, too” (386).

This place has affected Elle in both positive and negative ways. It’s the place where the worst thing imaginable happens to her by getting raped by Conrad, but it is also where she meets and falls in love with Jonas. The Paper Palace is a palace in that it withstands the test of time, always surviving the dark, cold, lonely winters. Like Elle and her family, it is strong and independent; however, it is also a metaphor for the family’s slimsy foundation that it’s built on and which shapes Elle’s life.

The Green Ring

Jonas gives Elle a green glass ring after Conrad dies when they make an oath to keep their secret about allowing him to drown. Jonas sees this ring as a promise ring, symbolizing the love between them. When he gives it to her, Jonas tells Elle that he loves her, but Elle only thinks it. She does not say it back, signifying that she is hesitant to make the same promise to him. She knows there is real love between them, but for Elle the ring also symbolizes the guilt she feels surrounding Conrad’s death. When Elle and Jonas meet in a coffee shop after years of not seeing each other, she tells him she wears the ring to remind her of what they did to Conrad. The ring symbolizes Jonas and Elle’s love, but their love is also connected to the day on the water when Conrad drowns, which is why Elle’s love for Jonas has always been tied to her regret and guilt for what she did.

Later, in the present, Elle finds the green ring returned to her in her jewelry box from Jonas. Elle acknowledges the importance of the ring as a symbol of love between her and Jonas:

It’s such a small thing, a worthless tin thing, its gilt long gone. Yet, when I put it on my finger I feel a powerful sense of completion—as if I’ve finally been made whole, restored—like a Venus de Milo whose missing arm has been found, trapped under the earth for centuries, and, at last, reattached. I close my eyes, allowing myself this, at least (358).

Everything that has happened has led her and Jonas farther away from each other, and Elle ultimately chooses to give the ring back to Jonas a second time. The ring doesn’t lose its symbol of love, but Elle chooses to leave their love behind for good and move forward in the journey to love and forgive herself. It’s significant that Elle leaves her wedding ring from Peter behind as she swims across the pond to Jonas at the end of the novel.