SYMBOLISM / MOTIFS / METAPHORS / IMAGERY / SYMBOLS

Other elements that are present in this novel include symbols and metaphors. Symbols are the use of some unrelated idea to represent something else. Metaphors are direct comparisons made between characters and ideas. There are many symbols and metaphors used by the author such as:

1. Noah metaphorically explains his life as a blue chip stock: fairly stable, more ups than downs, and gradually trending upward with time.

2. He goes on to describe his story as both a romance and a tragedy, which has involved a great deal of his life and the metaphorical path he chose to follow. He has no complaints about this path and believes that it has always been the right one. Time, unfortunately, hasn't made it easy for him to stay on course on this path. It has become strewn with rocks and gravel accumulated over a lifetime.

3. Noah reaches for his guitar, an instrument that symbolizes his father.

4. His favorite, dog-eared copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass symbolizes the poet in Noah.

5. A heart with the words Noah loves Allie inside it, carved the night before she left at the end of the summer symbolizes their early love.

6. The old oak tree symbolizes their earliest feelings of love.

7. Noah shows Allie the painting he has hung above his fireplace, and she is shocked to see it is the one she had painted the summer they were together. He tells her that it makes him feel alive, and that he can stare at it for hours. She admits that she remembers working on it every day that summer, adding to it and changing it as their relationship changed. It is a metaphor for their changing relationship.

8. Now, Noah, in his canoe, pauses at daybreak where for a moment the view is spectacular, as if the world is being born again.

9. Soon, the rain begins to fall, slowly at first and then heavier, as Noah paddles furiously to get them home. Nonetheless, he knows he is losing to Mother Nature. As for Allie, she holds her face up to the rain and allows it to soak her dress which she hopes will make Noah notice her body more. The rain and the thunder and the lightning are a metaphor for the sexual tension that is building between Noah and Allie.

10. The last thing she gives him is the drawing she had made the day before. It is a dual image, one of Noah in the foreground as he looks now, and the other the front of his house as if she had sketched it from the oak tree. This drawing symbolizes the way she sees him from within her heart.

11. All the birds they watch and listen to represent the magic moments of their lives.

12. Noah's porch is silent except for the sounds that float from the shadows. This symbolizes his loss of Allie when her Alzheimer's is diagnosed.

13. The familiar gesture of her thumb softly rubbing his finger symbolizes Allie's love for her husband no matter what walls are place in their way.

14. Dusk, Noah realizes, is just an illusion, because the sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are; there cannot be one without the other, yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel, he remembers wondering, to be always together, yet forever apart? This metaphor describes the agonizing impact of Alzheimer's.

15. Noah can't hold back the night, and he can't keep the thief away. This is a metaphor again for the devastation of Alzheimer's.

16. Who are we, Allie and I? Are we ancient ivy on a cypress tree, tendrils and branches intertwined so closely that we would die if we were forced apart? The symbiotic relationship described by Noah symbolizes the love he and Allie share.

17. It is powerful, a symbol, a circle, and he knows there could never have been another. This a symbolic description of Noah's wedding ring.

18. He is a stranger now. He cannot be stopped . . . he is a midnight bandit, masked and fleeing on horseback from sleepy desert towns, charging into yellow moons with gold dust in his saddlebags. He imagines he can lift Allie in his arms and ride off with her into paradise. This fantasy of Noah's is a metaphor of how he would like to defend and protect his Allie.

19. Noah becomes a mighty ship in churning waters, strong and fearless, and she is his sails. This is his final metaphorical description of their love.