59 pages • 1 hour read
Drew MagaryThe Postmortal
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A 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 Client’s Gun
John receives a gun from a Texan client who fears society will collapse and constructs a bunker. It is a small automatic handgun that John is immediately drawn to despite his initial insistence that he doesn’t want to take it. He reassures himself that he will pawn it for food vouchers, but he keeps the gun and ultimately uses it to beat a Greenie who assaults him. With this, the gun becomes the mechanism of his change by empowering him to harm others. This first violent incident sets the trajectory of his life, causing Alison to flee from him in terror and die and ultimately leading him to become an end specialist. The gun represents power and individual survival, and John chooses to accept it, keep it, and carry it with him after he was first attacked by the Greenies and permanently scarred by them. He continues to carry the gun as an end specialist, as it gives him the power to protect himself, which he did not have before.
Birthdays
Birthdays are quickly subverted in The Postmortal, turned from something worth celebrating into something that is a weapon. The Greenies abuse birthdates, marking the cured by cutting the date into their flesh; efforts to cover up these wounds leave a mark, turning the date into a source of trauma. A similar sort of trauma is reported in China, where babies and civilians are tattooed with their birth dates to identify people who were illegally cured. Birthdays become both a source of governmental and interpersonal persecution; Solara’s abusive boyfriend carves her birthdate into her when he finds out she is cured and promises to kill her on her 80th birthday. The only birthday that is celebrated in the text is David’s, showing how John performs tradition for the next generation that he cannot take pleasure in himself. His own birthday has become a source of pain, but he overcomes this for David’s sake. John goes so far as to mask his own birthday, giving a different year when he goes to the hospital for care. He is immediately recognized for this lie, which also underscores his status as cured. Birthdays become a way to enable discrimination in a strange adaptation of ageism.
News Articles and Headlines
News articles and headlines both feature prominently throughout the text. They provide the reader with a broader understanding of the events happening in the world outside of John’s knowledge and perspective. In first-person narratives, the writing is centered on the main character and how they experience the world. This gives the reader an intimate understanding of that character’s experience but can also alienate the reader from the experiences of others. By integrating news headlines and articles, Magary gives the reader a better understanding of what is happening in the world beyond John. He lays the groundwork for the civil unrest, environmental damage, and societal collapse occurring around the world. This gives the novel a global focus.
The inclusion of these articles also reinforces John’s loneliness and lack of connection. The reader sees that things are happening in the world, but for the most part, John does not interact with that knowledge unless it is immediately applicable to his circumstances. He could act on this information but does not, instead choosing to further isolate himself from the events around him. It is not until the end of the novel, when he falls in love with Solara, that he starts paying more attention. Ironically, this increased attention comes days before the beginning of nuclear war and his death, meaning a collapse of the news-sharing structures he integrated into his daily life.
These news articles are also referenced in the novel’s prologue because they prove the veracity of John’s story. Because John includes such extensive records of the past, the Department of Containment proclaims that his story is true. In the book’s world, these articles amplify it as a primary source, shedding light on what happened and demonstrating that the cure should not be legal. These news stories thus both begin and end the novel by being part of the frame narrative.
