Beautiful World, Where Are You

Cinematic lighting is one of the most dominating visual motifs in the novel, often underscoring themes of aesthetics and interpersonal communion. Rooney hangs natural light in environments as a visual cue throughout the novel to represent the levels of honesty in communication between characters. Natural light stands in contrast to the “orange glow” of urban light pollution. For example, Lola stares at Eileen on the day of her wedding, standing from in front of a window and imbuing a blinding superiority or emotional authority, with the white afternoon light casting a thin watery sheen around Lola’s silhouette (236). Eileen cannot read any subtext in Lola’s obscured shadow, but since the two have a tumultuous relationship, she doesn’t try to seek further clear communication with her sister. In contrast, when Eileen has trouble verbalizing what she wants from Simon romantically, she sits with her face slightly turned, “the light of the ceiling lamp white on her cheekbones and the corner of her eyelid” (156), showing a fear of vulnerability alongside her strong love for Simon.

Rooney also throws light around to explore emotional subtext, denoting which rooms invite open communication by way of their reflective windows betraying hidden expressions. In contrast, sometimes the thick weight of a shared humanity reveals itself in the velvety condensation on a window, obstructing any outside worldly influence from infringing upon a beautiful moment. Light is thus a thematic literary device that exposes emotional vulnerability through profile and shadow.

Rooney emphasizes the repetitive sunrise because it also foreshadows the impending denouement of civilization as it approaches peak capacity and potential economic failure. Ironically, the joy of a new day is both emotionally reassuring and temporally devastating as humanity trudges on towards whatever lies in store.

The novel’s larger theme of intimacy is explored through the motif of friendship. When Eileen and Alice meet after months of separation, Simon looks at the scene and sees that “[s]he had come to see her, they were together again, it did not matter much now what they said or did” (256). The material conditions of a miserable world pale in comparison to the joy of interpersonal connection. Rooney hints that this is perhaps the “nicest” thing about humanity over all of history: that we are too obsessed with pleasing each other, perhaps the truest, most important type of living.

Sex is a motif in the novel especially for the plethora of meanings it holds depending on context and relationship, and it functions to both illuminate the characters and catalyze the intimacy they fear. On one hand, sex can be an intellectual means of categorizing relationships, like how Alice writes that for her it feels “normal to meet people and think of them in a sexual way without actually having sex with them—or, more to the point, without even imaging having sex with them” (91). Sex can take an aesthetic importance, emotional importance, an animalistic or scientific importance, or be a marker of marginalized identity signifiers. Sex permeates culture and society, but humanity is largely unknowledgeable about the origins and language in communicating this desire accurately. It is one of the most widely obsessed about but rarely explained natural human drives, showing that desire is at the heart of humanity, even if humans aren’t themselves deft at wielding sexuality. According to Alice, a kind of sexual desire even pervades religious impulses; eros, as a drive to unity, plays into a longing for communion, whether spiritual or physical and sexual.

The novel explores celebrity culture as a false theory of value because it does nothing to help progress society or strengthen a sense of aesthetic appreciation. At the same time, Rooney uses the idea of celebrity culture to reflect a key aspect of the humanity her novel portrays: the longing for the sacred. Ironically, though celebrity is associated with one’s work achievements and class identity, its true consumer purpose is to focus love and desire onto a person who often becomes a symbol of divinity. Even while Alice and Eileen puzzle over Simon’s devotion, Alice writes to Eileen that she “wonder[s] whether celebrity culture has sort of metastasised to fill the emptiness left by religion. Like a malignant growth where the sacred used to be” (328). Yet another of Alice’s key anxieties is the nature of her authorial craft and whether it is simply a veiled mode of consumerism; the idea of being a celebrity, as an author, gnaws away at her for this reason. The characters are continually negotiating, consciously and unconsciously, their longing for a fulfilled humanity.

Rooney’s characters describe living and working in several cities across the globe, most notably Dublin, New York, London, and Paris. These major cities continue to be hubs for friendships shared from afar. Because cities are centers of consumer life, they filter social life through a capitalist outlook, and friendships are divided into marketable values and disconnected events. Ironically, the cramped urbanism of the capitalist city is coldly impersonal despite its compactness. Like how identity categories feel meaningless, cities feel obsolete and disconnected from people, no longer the aesthetic markers of an advanced society.

The failure of cities to accommodate their creators is partially what drives Alice to move to the country, continuing a common pattern of writers and artists throughout history absconding from human society in order to focus on emotional healing and aesthetic pleasure.

Eileen puts heavy importance on aging. She wants Simon to always remember her as she looked at 20, and Alice nearly apologizes to Felix for not having the body she once did. Eileen also traces major life events by age gaps as a means of comparing her material situation with others for reassurance. She has no idea what to say when her mother complains about how her life turned out because “Eileen was twenty-three then and her mother was fifty-one” (32). The fact that at 51 Mary has not yet figured out her life worries Eileen that she is also doomed to become unhappy and adrift. She measures her own success to her friends by way of their accumulated temporality. A number of years alive means far more than just an age; it means a dedication to enduring human suffering in an unfair society with arbitrary rules, and so it is a clear mechanic she uses to measure her social standing.