Heartbeat

Annie’s assignment to draw apples becomes a way of measuring the passage of time in the story, along with her mother’s pregnancy. Just as the novel begins with the family preparing for a baby and ends with its arrival, Heartbeat is similarly bookended by the introduction and completion of the apple drawings. Both the unborn child and Annie’s drawings change over time, and Annie’s confusion about how the alien skeleton in an ultrasound can be a living human being (67) is mirrored in her reflections on her drawings: “and I don’t know how I will draw it / and will it still be an apple / if it doesn’t look like an apple?” (91).

The progression of apple drawings also emphasizes Annie’s journey to discover her own identity and role, a central theme of the book. When she first begins the drawings, she remarks that “I do not see how my lines / are different from other people’s lines” (73). By the time she is halfway done with the assignment, she discovers that her drawings are distinctively hers: “At first I think I will not find mine / among all the hundreds of apples / but they jump out at me / and I know them instantly as mine. / I know my line” (112).

Apples become a symbol for the cycle of life for Annie, and her drawing collection changes as she grapples with the promise of life and loss. After her grandfather, in his deteriorating state, takes a bite from her apple, she says that she will now draw the apple with a new bite taken out of it each day, until it is just a core (109). However, in the final poem of the novel, it is revealed that Annie’s apple drawings continue from the depiction of an apple core and conclude in a drawing of a seed (189). This significant revision implies new life that stems from old life, and the collection of drawings mirror Annie’s understanding of the changes occurring within her family.