49 pages • 1 hour read

Brooklyn

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Bathing Suit

The motif of the bathing suit directly represents Eilis’s experiences with Brooklyn as a Source of Social Possibility. Eilis has not brought a bathing suit with her to Brooklyn from Ireland, and when Tony invites her to the beach at Coney Island, she scrambles to find one. With Miss Fortini, she selects one, and is given much advice from her and the boarders on how to dress with it and to shave and accessorize with sunglasses. This experience is very different from her times at the beach in Ireland, and she recognizes this even more when she is told to wear her bathing suit to the beach: “Italians had carried to America with them the custom of putting their bathing suits on under their clothes before they set out, thus avoiding the Irish habit of changing on the beach” (166). At Coney Island, the swimsuit is an emblem of modernizing attitudes toward the body and of rapidly changing fashions. Eilis buys sunglasses to go with her swimsuit, as these are apparently a must-have accessory that summer. The speed with which fashions come and go matches the pace of cultural change in this tumultuous environment. Eilis’s arrival on the beach is seamless, and when she goes into the water unbothered by the cold, unlike Tony, she recognizes another difference between Ireland and the US. Her water at home is colder, and despite not initially being prepared to come to the beach, she is more prepared than those around her to enjoy it.

Picture With Jim Farrell

The picture with Jim Farrell, taken on the beach in Ireland, stands as a reminder to Eilis not only of her time visiting after Rose’s death, but also her time in Ireland as a whole. The picture is a motif that represents how The Longing for Home wanes over time. When the picture is taken and Eilis looks at it in the weeks after, she sees the crossroads in front of her. She knows she must decide whether to stay or go, and when she decides to leave, she understands that the power of the picture, just like the picture itself, will fade over time: “Sometime in the future, she thought, she would look at them and remember what would soon, she knew now, seem like a strange, hazy dream to her” (261). Just as Eilis’s homesickness waned the more she put down roots and developed a life in Brooklyn, so too will the memory of her time in Ireland, both with Jim Farrell and before, fade. The picture represents her life in Ireland because her commitment to Tony, and therefore the US, means that she won’t return permanently, and her life in Enniscorthy will become a second life, living on only in memory. Homesickness is powerful, which is why she feels so strongly for Enniscorthy and Jim Farrell when she returns, but as she begins to build a new life, the picture will become just a picture of a time she cannot reclaim.

Nylon Tights

The nylon tights sold at Bartocci’s in Brooklyn are a symbol of the new American culture that Eilis must confront and acclimate to. Eilis is startled by the mayhem of the nylon sale at Bartocci’s and realizes that the popularity of the nylons is well known. When she eats dinner with the boarders that night, they express their love for the nylons and their wish that Eilis could warn them of the sale in the future: “‘Well, if you ever hear, even a rumor,’ Diana said, ‘you’ll have to let us know. And the nylon stockings are the best, they don’t run easily as some of the others. They’d sell you garbage, some of those other stores’” (67). Diana expresses how the nylon stockings are the most popular and dependable and that access to them is integral to the women’s style. Eilis recognizes this importance and makes sure to buy some for her mother and sister as gifts. The nylons are just the beginning of American fashion, and as Eilis’s confidence grows, so too does her wardrobe. When she returns to Ireland in Part 4, Nancy explains that part of the reason people are paying more attention to Eilis is her new fashion sense, which reflects an American newness and confidence. Eilis’s association with American fashion represents her entrance into American culture, even if she does not recognize that it impacts her until she returns to Enniscorthy and sees the difference firsthand.