Life After Life

Kate Atkinson

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Parts 1-15

Parts 16-20

Parts 21-24

Parts 25-30

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Literary Devices

Pastoral Imagery

The pastoral mode uses images of the countryside and of agricultural life to represent a different, better, or simpler time or way of life. In the novel, pastoral imagery creates a contrast to the horrors of war; when she reports with her team to the site of a bombing, Ursula tries “to think of the meadow at the back of the copse at Fox Corner. Flax and larkspur, corn poppies, red campion and oxeye daisies. She [thinks] of the smell of new-mown grass and the freshness of summer rain” (427). This provides imaginative solace, but the imagery of growing things is used elsewhere to represent constructs of nation; Ursula thinks of Germany as dramatic mountains and England as a homely garden full of runner beans.

The appeal of the pastoral also helps Ursula make an emotional connection to her patriotism, by contrasting the abstract political construct of a nation with the familiar imagery attached to her childhood home. When talking to Teddy about the war and its devastation, Ursula thinks, “she would rather die for Fox Corner than ‘England.’ For meadow and copse and the stream that ran through the bluebell wood. Well, that was England, wasn’t it? The blessed plot” (445). The pastoral imagery heightens the sense of loss during the war scenes by giving the characters, and reader, a nostalgic glimpse of a quieter, safer, nurturing mode of life.

Repetition

Atkinson uses the device of repetition in several ways throughout the novel. Repetition helps create a timeline that anchors a plot that might otherwise grow unwieldy or confusing as Ursula is born again and again. The repeating scenes of her birth add new information each time, creating further interest, helping the reader tell the scenes apart, and grounding the sensation that Ursula is beginning anew. Atkinson likewise uses the repetition of certain phrases to identify ways characters persist in their personalities; Sylvie, for instance, is often associated with the phrase “needs must,” while Hugh nicknames Ursula “little bear” and the repetition of this reinforces the affection between them. Repeated images like Lavinia’s dress with its cat brooch and rhinestone eye represent the precious things being destroyed by the bombings but also express the surreal effects and lack of logic to the devastation. Moments of repetition also help provide narrative coherence through very different timelines, and changes to small details help add surprise and interest, for instance, in the way Derek once notices Ursula’s scarf is salmon, and in the second instance calls it turquoise.

Allusion

As a reference to a person or entity that has an existence outside the text, allusion allows an author to inject further meaning into a moment or event. Allusions in Life After Life are most frequently to other literary works, adding to the imaginative life of the character under consideration. At one point, in bed with a lover, Ursula muses on a historical lover she’d choose. She decides she’d prefer early modern English poet John Donne, known for his intelligent love poetry, over the Romantic poet John Keats, which she thinks would be too tragic a choice. On the same page, Izzy imagines herself as the heroine from Daphne Du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, a work of romantic suspense. When Teddy takes an agricultural apprenticeship and is also writing poetry, Hugh says they’ll expect a new Georgics from him (277), a reference to the work by the Roman classical poet, in which he established the pastoral mode, discussed above. When Ursula converses about college plans with her mother, each time she is reading a different novel, suggesting different desires or goals for each life. Together, the allusions add to the narrative by hinting at the characters’ embeddedness in a rich cultural world that extends beyond her own life.