So Long, See You Tomorrow

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1980

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-9

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Houses and Homes

Houses are primary settings within the novel as well as symbolic representations of families in transition. The most salient symbolic structure is the house under construction, where the narrator and Cletus play on the scaffolding. The house, like the families of both boys, is in a transitional state. One family is being rebuilt and the other disassembled. The repeated references to scaffolding enhance the symbolic meanings. The word is derived from the Old French term eschafal, which means separation. Family separations unite the playmates. But when Cletus leaves the scaffolding the day before the murder, the boys will be separated permanently.

“The Palace at 4 A.M.”

The symbol of the unfinished house is itself symbolized by a sculpture called “The Palace at 4 A.M” by Alberto Giacometti. The narrator explains that this skeletal wooden sculpture has always reminded him of the house being constructed on Park Place. He includes a lengthy quote in which Giacometti describes his inspiration for the work. Every night for six months, the artist and a mysterious woman created a “fantastic palace” from matchsticks that would topple in the morning to be rebuilt anew each evening. The palace existed in an eerie space where night was indistinguishable from day. In the sculpture inspired by this experience, a column of scaffolding stands in the middle of a tower, leading up to an unfinished or perhaps shattered roof.

Giacometti’s quote immediately precedes the narrator’s description of memory as fiction and the past as a lie, a major turning point in the novel that encapsulates its central theme. The significance of the sculpture is underscored in the final pages when the narrator enters a place he calls “The Palace at 4 A.M.” This is a dreamlike, liminal space where he can move between the present and the past by walking from room to room. In this place “[w]hat is done can be undone. It is there that I find Cletus Smith” (132). The Palace symbolizes the unfinished house, and the unfinished house symbolizes the shared experience of shattered families. Memory and Fiction, past and present, art and reality—all collapse into a single image.

Trixie’s Howls

The dog’s suffering at the Smith family’s demise is a motif supporting the major theme of Family Instability and Its Effect on Children. The connection between children and dogs helps the reader appreciate the emotional devastation caused by divorce. She doesn’t deserve what is happening to her, a reminder of Cletus’s innocence. Trixie’s longing for her family gives voice to the emotions Cletus is forced to hide. She howls in the night while Cletus suffers in silence.

The breakdown of the family happens in Trixie’s presence and is of grave importance to her, but she can’t do anything to stop it. She tries to intervene in the estate sale but is locked in the barn, the same location where Cletus attempted his failed intervention. She runs away from the farm to look for her family but is rejected by Clarence. The experience mirrors and inverts Cletus’s failed visit to the farm where he is forbidden to return.

Dogs are profound carriers of meaning in art and literature, associated with loyalty, protection, friendship, and innocence. Maxwell’s use of canine suffering draws on these associations to illuminate the impact of divorce on powerless children.