55 pages • 1 hour read
A Simple Favor
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Symbols & Motifs
Sapphire Ring
One of Emily’s prized possessions is a sapphire and diamond ring that once belonged to Sean’s mother. In fact, it is one of the first things Stephanie notices about her. Stephanie sees the ring as a symbol of Emily herself: “[B]ecause she moves her hands a lot when she talks, I think of the ring as a sparkling creature with a life of its own, like Tinker Bell flying out in front of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys” (14). Stephanie’s perception of the ring is much like her perception of Emily herself as magical—a good mother, with a full-time career, who is smart and sophisticated.
The ring symbolizes Emily herself: beautiful, unusual, and not at all what it appears. She tells Stephanie that Sean’s mother gave it to him to use as an engagement ring for her, but it has a very different history that reveals Emily’s moral ambiguity, as well as her control of Sean. In the initial story about the ring, Emily steals it and then uses the theft to force Sean to choose between her and his mother. His willingness to go along with her theft foreshadows how he will go along with her future, larger, plan to fake her own death.
The ring also ends up being the key to Emily’s deception—by giving it to her sister, and then tacitly giving her permission to die by suicide, she ensures that her sister will be identified as her. However, the ring also convinces Sean that Emily, despite what she has said, is actually dead, and upends their plan.
Patricia Highsmith Novels
Patricia Highsmith was an American crime thriller novelist, and her books are a motif that runs throughout A Simple Favor. Bell uses this famous author and her work to connect A Simple Favor to noir classics such at Strangers on a Train and Those Who Walk Away, two of her novels that are specifically mentioned in A Simple Favor. By directly referencing such a well-known noir author, Bell places her own novel in this context, steeping the narrative in noir tone and style, and foreshadowing the scheming and duplicitousness of the characters. In addition, Those Who Walk Away, the novel that Emily was reading before she disappeared, involves insurance fraud, offering a clue to both Stephanie and the reader.
Not only do these references draw parallels to the noir genre, thus placing the novel into that genre, this motif also develops Emily’s character. By introducing Stephanie to Strangers on a Train early in the novel, Emily also gives her friend insight into her character. Stephanie misses this first clue, although she is given another chance when she finds another Highsmith book, Those Who Walk Away, partially read, on Emily’s coffee-table. This book does spur Stephanie to think that “Emily might have walked away. […] People walk away” (30), and she decides to read the book for more insight into Emily. With these references, Bell underscores the mood and tone of the novel and develops Emily’s character.
Vegetarianism
Stephanie’s vegetarianism begins on the day that Davis and Chris die in a car accident on their way to buy meat for a barbeque. “It was at that moment that I became a vegetarian” (110), she tells the reader. This shift in her diet coincides with her vow to change her life: “No more men. No more bad choices. It was all about Miles” (122). She continues with both the diet and the lifestyle until she gets involved with Sean. Her involvement with him coincides with a corresponding shift in her diet:
I’ve been eating red meat for the first time since Chris and Davis died. I’m amazed (and a little disappointed in myself) by how much I still love that rich, salty, juicy, bloody taste. And I’ve started to associate that delicious taste with being around Sean. I feel almost as if we’re vampires on a sexy TV series where the undead with their fangs and perfect bodies zoom across the screen to have sex (77).
These two things, her relationship with Sean and her diet, continue to coincide and to her, eating meat and being with Sean both have The Allure of What’s Forbidden. On the rare night that she and Miles return to their home and eat alone, they eat vegetarian: “One night, I was at my house with Miles eating dinner: pasta with fresh tomato sauce, the kind of delicious vegetarian meal we used to have when it was just the two of us. It was a relief, in a way. A relief and a pleasure” (135). As much as she enjoys the thrills of her affair with Sean, she also feels relief as slipping back into the life that she has built with Miles.
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