60 pages • 2 hours read
Sarah DessenSomeone Like You
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1998A 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
The Grand Canyon
Content Warning: This section references death.
The Grand Canyon represents the widening gap between Halley’s childhood and adolescence. This canyon creates distance in Halley’s relationship with her parents as well as her relationship with the person she used to be as she explores her identity. At the beginning of this pivotal summer in Halley’s life, she and her parents take a trip to the Grand Canyon and take a photo together. This photograph now sits on her parents’ mantel, and Halley’s mother keeps the photo displayed as a sort of memorial to what their relationship used to be: “It was like she knew, somehow, that it would be a relic just months later, proof of another time and place neither of us could imagine had existed: my mother and I, best friends, posing at the Grand Canyon” (19). The photograph represents the last time Halley felt truly close to her parents because she began growing distant from them as soon as they returned home from that trip. Thus, the Grand Canyon becomes a symbol of a “vast and uncrossable” distance between Halley and her parents (171).
As her relationship with Macon progresses, Halley feels a widening gap between not only herself and her parents but also the girl she is becoming and “the perfect daughter [she]’d been in that Grand Canyon picture” (66). Halley looks at that photo and no longer feels like the same person, even though the photograph was taken only months earlier. She feels herself crossing over to the other side of that canyon, fully immersing herself in this new life: “And I kissed him back hard, letting loose that girl from the early summer and the Grand Canyon. At that moment, suspended and free-falling, I could feel her leaving me” (131). Halley symbolically “lets go” of the girl she used to be so as to fully inhabit this new version of herself, although it comes at the cost of increasing strain between herself and those she cares about.
The Grand Canyon, as a symbol of this distance in Halley’s relationships, comes to a climax when she finds a copy of the photo in Macon’s bedroom: “Me, at the Grand Canyon with my mother […] But she wasn’t in this picture, had somehow been cut out neatly, leaving only me with my arm reaching nowhere, cut off at the elbow” (156). Halley realizes that Macon has removed her mother from the photo by cutting her out of it, a symbolic act that represents how Halley’s choices are creating an ever-widening expanse between her and her parents.
Baby Grace
Scarlett’s pregnancy is one of the major plot points within the text. Baby Grace is a symbol of the growth and change that can happen to a person in a short amount of time, the ways in which momentary decisions can have a last impact on one’s life, and new beginnings.
Early on in her pregnancy, Scarlett makes the decision to keep the baby rather than have an abortion: “I just realized I couldn’t. I mean, sure, nothing is going to be normal for me anymore. But how normal has my life ever been? Growing up with Marion sure wasn’t, losing Michael wasn’t. Nothing ever has been” (113). With this one decision, Scarlett radically changes the course of her life. She acknowledges this in stating that nothing has ever been quite “normal” for her, and as such, following through with her pregnancy is another example of this. Scarlett changes her life in order to be the kind of mother she wishes Marion had been: She eats a varied diet, exercises, and takes prenatal classes. Scarlett views her pregnancy as an opportunity rather than a derailment; it is a way for her to keep her life on track because she is now responsible for someone else’s.
Although Scarlett misses Michael and cites her mourning for him throughout the text, Scarlett does not view the pregnancy solely as a way to hold onto her deceased boyfriend, whom she dated for only a few short months. She tells Halley, “If he was here, I don’t even know what might have happened between us. We were only together for a summer, you know? […] I’ll never know. But when it gets like this […] all I can think is that he might have made everything okay” (138). This quote illustrates Scarlett’s realistic view and understanding of young love—that her relationship with Michael may not have lasted even if he had not died and she were still to have gotten pregnant. Even if her relationship had not lasted, this quote illustrates the profound impact that small moments in life can have.
When Grace is born, Halley experiences a rush of emotion when looking at her for the first time: “I was overwhelmed. She was our year, from the summer with Michael to the winter with Macon. We would never forget” (278). Grace’s birth is the culmination of enormous life changes that Scarlett and Halley have experienced in the last year, beginning with Michael’s death. Although Grace is a reminder of their tumultuous year, Grace’s birth is the birth of a new chapter. Her name, Grace, can be interpreted as the grace or forgiveness that Halley and Scarlett have to give themselves for enduring hardships and making mistakes. Grace is their new beginning, a new life to help guide them through the same tumult and changes they have navigated.
Halley’s Comet
Halley’s Comet is not only the inspiration for Grandma Halley’s name, Halley’s namesake, but also a symbol of Halley taking agency and ownership of her life outside of her mother’s influence. An important moment in Halley’s childhood was watching Halley’s Comet with her Grandma Halley. This scene highlights the tension between Halley and her own mother, who she recalls claiming at the time, “[N]o one could see [the comet], it was too hazy” (145). The more frustrated Halley becomes with her mother, the more she looks back on memories through a lens that casts Julia in a controlling light.
This tension reaches its climactic moment when Halley and her mother directly argue about whether or not Halley can remember seeing the comet. Julia dismisses her memory, and Halley seethes, “And that was it; it was so easy for her. My own memories did not even belong to me. But I knew she was wrong. I had seen that comet. I knew it as well as I knew my own face, my own hands. My own heart” (195-96). This quote articulates what resides at the core of Halley’s conflict with her mother: Halley’s sense that her mother’s inability to trust her runs so deep that Halley’s own recollections cannot be correct. This quote illustrates that Halley is beginning to trust herself more without Julia’s guiding hand: She cannot uncover the exact memory of seeing the comet, the finer details of what it looked like, but she has developed a sense of inner trust in herself that it did happen. This is another way that Halley asserts her independence from her mother by reclaiming her own memories.
After Halley’s breakup with Macon, she and her mother have a difficult but productive conversation. Halley instates a firm and developmentally appropriate boundary, telling Julia that she needs to be given the space and freedom in which to make her own mistakes with the trust that Halley’s mother has raised her to make good decisions. They come to an uneasy truce, the distance between them not altogether bridged but smaller than it was before. This moment has symbolic importance as well, as Halley once more revisits her memory of watching Halley’s Comet with Grandma Halley: “I’d always thought I couldn’t remember, but suddenly in that moment, I closed my eyes and saw the comet, finally, brilliant and impossible, stretching above me across the sky” (248). Halley’s ability to recall the clear image of the comet, something she has never been able to do, illustrates that she is setting up healthy boundaries between her and Julia. Her and her mother’s realities (Julia claiming that she could not see the comet and Halley’s memory of seeing it) can exist alongside one another as two versions of the truth that no longer need to exist in conflict.
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