64 pages • 2 hours read
Helen OyeyemiBoy, Snow, Bird
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A 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
Mirrors
Mirrors are one of the two most important motifs in the novel. Each of the main characters struggles with mirrors, although each of their understanding of mirrors is just a little bit different. Boy begins the novel by telling us that no one ever warned her about mirrors, “so for many years [she] was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy” (3). She originally liked to set them up across from one another in order to create infinite versions of herself; of course, this also has the effect of shutting out anything outside the world that the mirrors create. She uses mirrors to figure out her mood, suggesting that she did not trust her own instincts and emotions. However, while the person in the mirror is her, the person in the mirror is also different from her; this manifests most prominently in the novel when she sees a bloodied version of herself on Ivory down, trying to get her to follow her into the woods.
Bird, of course, has her own issues with mirrors, as she does not see her own reflection at times. Whereas Boy’s reflection was different, showing her another version of herself, Bird’s is merely absent, suggesting a feeling of invisibility or unimportance. Her lack of a reflection further demonstrates how she interacts with those around her, as she believes that what’s happening in the mirror could, among other things, be the work of either a friend or an enemy. If it is an enemy, that person is making her disappear; if it is a friend, that person is perhaps trying to help her by making her disappear. Neither suggestion bodes terribly well. She also demonstrates a lack of trust through her lack of a reflection, as she believes that people around her are also aware of it, yet choose not to say anything; to Bird, they are hiding the truth from her. It’s telling that this changes when she meets her sister, as the mirror acts as it did for Boy, showing Bird and Snow that they should be embracing, and—as Bird believes—pushing them to do so.
Lastly, of course, Frances becomes Frank once she begins to see Frank in the mirror. There’s no suggestion that she had this issue prior to that; for all we are aware, mirrors acted normally for her up until that point. Nevertheless, much as it did for Boy, the mirror showed Frances another version of herself, and she chose to become that version, instead.
The recurring motif of mirrors reinforces the duality of truth in the novel. People in Boy, Snow, Bird can be, and often are, multiple things simultaneously, and are always concerned with how they appear to the outside world, although not typically as a measure of vanity. Mirrors reflect our appearance at any given moment, and appearance is meaningful. For Frances, for example, mirrors reinforced her femininity, which she sought to destroy. Boy contains multitudes and is never clear which of these to bring to the surface; she’s always just a touch wary of those around her, and therefore keeps her guard up. Bird is a dark-skinned child whose light-skinned family wants to send away, and whose absent sister was the favored child—it’s hard not to feel invisible in a situation like that. Conversely, Snow claims to have trouble with mirrors as well; we don’t get much information about Snow’s troubles, but someone who has spent her life with others telling her who she is would certainly be in touch with that part of her identity.
Fairytales and Folklore
The centrality of the mirror in the novel is one with clear connection to its folklorist roots: the fairytale it features most prominently is, of course, Snow White, which prominently features a magic mirror; as the mirror never lies, one way to interpret the connection is that the mirrors in Boy, Snow, Bird show the characters who they really are, as outlined above. Snow White also features an evil stepmother—the owner of the aforementioned mirror—and the novel features many references to evil stepmothers and evil more broadly. Mia and Boy, for example, view the snake bracelet given to Boy by Arturo to be something evil stepmothers would wear, and, of course, Boy sends her stepdaughter away, in part because she is so well-loved.
However, the novel subverts this facet of the tale, not least of all because of the definitive lack of murder. While it’s a fair reading to claim that Boy sends Snow away because she’s well-loved, this isn’t her reasoning; she believes Snow to be somehow fake, and therefore dangerous to her newborn daughter. This understanding of Snow is not singular: Mia and Bird feel the same way about the adult version of Snow, and even Snow herself seems uncertain of who she is, having let other people tell her who she is for so long. Further, while the evil stepmother in Snow White is extremely vain, Boy is anything but vain; in fact, she introduces herself at the start of the novel by describing herself as quite average.
Besides its connection to Snow White, the novel employs various, allegorical stories-within-stories told by the characters in order to make points. La Belle Capuchine is another folktale that features prominently, and it is notable that Bird and Snow each have their own version of it. Bird’s version features a beautiful light-skinned woman of color, a slave, who gains favor with her mistress by mimicking her; however, when High John returns to free the slaves, she is mistaken for her mistress and left behind. The act of mimicking her mistress could certainly be interpreted as passing, and the fact that she is left behind is akin to those passing abandoning their own.
As mentioned in the analysis above, Snow recognizes herself in the tale, but it could probably be applied more accurately to Olivia Whitman. Snow’s own version of La Belle Capuchine, however, is quite different: in her version, Capuchine is a gardener of poisonous plants, and is herself poisonous; her garden continually takes over and destroys the world, only for her to wake up and have the garden do the same thing all over again. As Snow explains, when she was sent away, she began to believe that beauty was a bad thing (which, in Snow White, of course, it is), so her version reflects this understanding of beauty.
Other folktales include the story of the farmer’s wife, who only wants to do good but is constantly hindered by those who fear her beauty; Kazim’s tale of the king and queen, who must battle to keep their names, only for the battle to renew each year; and Bird’s tale of the spiders in her room. (Of course, this last one, Bird insists, is true, and in fact her telling of La Belle Capuchine is part of that story.)
Fairytales and folktales also have a larger significance beyond explaining points, as Arturo points out to Boy that Bird, when she was younger, internalized the actions while accepting the more magical elements. Specifically, regarding Cinderella, she accepted without question that the grandiose elements were true, but she couldn’t understand why Cinderella wouldn’t have retaliated. This not only speaks to Bird’s worldview, but also the ethos of the story world: fantastical elements are perfectly acceptable, and it is actually the actions of people that are mystifying. (Cinderella is referenced numerous times throughout the text, in fact, but its plot points are not as intertwined with the novel.)
The Snake Bracelet
The image of the snake more broadly is one that recurs throughout the text, and is, of course, a multilayered literary symbol: it is universal in that snakes are hidden dangers to human beings; it is conventional in Christian mythology—and frequently, therefore, in Western literature—as a representation of evil and temptation. In this text, the snake first appears before Arturo and Boy are in a relationship, as a central figure in a story co-recalled by Boy and Mia. A beautiful woman, who wants nothing but to farm and feed people with her yield, is unaffected by the commands of a magician. It is revealed at the end of the story that the woman’s heart is a snake, which subverts the traditional symbol.
The next time a snake appears, however, it is as an engagement bracelet that Arturo makes for Boy. Boy fears the snake bracelet, yet nonetheless accepts it because it was made for her; she recognizes the symbol as an evil one, yet simultaneously that it is one borne out of love. The bracelet also further connects Boy to the evil stepmother trope, as Mia points out, yet this is once again subverted when Mia promises that “It only looks like that. That’s not how it really is” (110). Her promise doubles as a promise to Boy that she will not become that which she fears.
Later, she puts the bracelet away as her pregnancy furthers, symbolically rejecting the evil of the symbol as she gets ready to give life. However, once she has given birth, she begins to miss it, and when she almost strikes Snow, she believes it is the snake pushing her to do it. (It is notable that she resists completing this action.) The last we see of the bracelet is from Bird’s perspective, recalling its ominous nature as she compares it to an unsettling wolf music box sent to her from Snow before they began writing to one another. Bird notes that the snake, for example, “winds around her arm […] draining its favorite vein drop by drop, or resting until she has instructions for it” (165).
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By Helen Oyeyemi
