49 pages • 1 hour read
Zadie SmithNW
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Nature
NW may be a thoroughly urban novel, fixated on London as a cosmopolitan city, but throughout the text, nature and natural imagery provide a subtle but key counterpoint. Characters are periodically drawn to the wildness of nature and the beauty, freedom, and authenticity it represents in contrast to the often grim, inescapable, and chaotic urban landscape.
The novel opens with Leah outdoors, lying in the sun. In “Visitation,” as she deals with the aftermath of Shar’s theft, her neighbor Ned—a relaxed stoner, one of the few characters in the novel who does not seem crippled by anxiety about his identity—encourages her to enjoy a beautiful sunset. Later, as Michel talks at length about his determination to get ahead in life, Leah finds herself distracted, “thinking of apples” and the blossoms on trees (33). Later, Natalie is also inexplicably attracted to an apple blossom, compelled to snap it off a tree and take it with her on the way to the train, wondering “What could she do with a branch?” (301). Natural imagery like the sunset and apple blossoms serve as islands of fleeting beauty and encapsulate the genuineness that so many of NW’s characters seek.
Transportation
Throughout NW, modes of transportation—trains and buses, and sometimes cars—signify transformation, escape, and freedom. Given that public transportation is a central aspect of London life and quite literally a means to get from one point to another, this is no surprise. What is particular about the way that NW highlights transportation is that it is frequently alluded to in connection to times of significant change in characters’ lives.
For example, a flashback section in “Guest” shows that the event that led to Grace and Felix’s relationship was a casual meeting at a bus stop. Grace deems the meeting “fate,” and ultimately, Felix’s relationship with Grace spurs his decision to turn his life around. Ironically, the trip during which Felix is murdered after exiting the train begins with him meeting Tom to buy an MG sports car as a surprise gift for Grace. The optimism of his new life and relationship with her—epitomized by the purchase of a car, a symbol of freedom—is cut short by a tragic murder rooted in a trivial argument on the train.
Modes of transportation are similarly connected to points of change in Keisha/Natalie’s life. One day in her youth, Leah decides to take the number 37 bus to see a different set of friends in Camden Lock instead of going to church with Keisha. This bus ride is indicative of the growing separation between the two, as they develop their individual tastes and ambitions in late adolescence. Keisha understands education as a means to escape the confines of Caldwell, yet she is unable to afford the train rides to interview for colleges in Manchester and Edinburgh, and her postsecondary options are limited to Bristol. Nevertheless, college provides an opportunity for her to transform her identity and name.
Transportation enables her and Leah to visit each other at their respective schools, thereby reconnecting on a deeper level. On one of those visits, as Leah gets on the bus to return home, she tells Natalie, “You’re the only person I can be all of myself with” (246). As she says goodbye to her friend, Natalie breaks down, gripped by the sense that she cannot articulate her own identity. If the spaces of London represent what is enduring about their lives, then the modes of transportation that move about those spaces represent characters’ struggles with change.
Meals
In NW, scenes that involve meals illuminate characters’ social interactions and understanding of each other. In some instances, references to meals define differences in class and social standing. When Keisha’s father, Gus, treats her and Leah to McDonald’s, the girls are delighted; when they run into Pauline Hanwell on the way home, she silently judges them. Keisha, for her part, is infatuated with the way the higher-class Hanwells serve tea, and she imitates this in her own home. Years later, when Michel and Leah are invited to dinners at the home of Natalie and Frank, they feel entirely out of place. Though Leah has been friends with Natalie since childhood, neither she nor Michel “know what to say to barristers and bankers, to the occasional judge. Natalie cannot believe that they are shy. Each time she blames some error of placement but each time the awkwardness remains” (96). In instances like these, meals are an uncomfortable reminder of the class divisions between characters.
At other times, meals are occasions for the novel’s perennial questions about identity and authentic selfhood to reemerge. For instance, just prior to Natalie’s decision to break up with Rodney and her subsequent fall into ennui about who she really is, she and Leah share a fancy meal on International Women’s Day as a chance to be together. Likewise, early in their marriage, Natalie and Frank have brunch with another couple, where the small talk becomes too much for the work-obsessed Natalie, who longs to get up from the restaurant table and “go to the bathroom and spend the next hour alone with her email” (300). These instances of meals in the novel have less to do with class divides; the educated and successful Natalie does not feel uncomfortable at her brunch just as Leah feels uncomfortable at Natalie’s dinner parties. Instead, they show that the feelings of insecurity and disaffection so many of NW’s characters face emerge no matter who or where they are, and certainly in shared social situations.
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By Zadie Smith
