64 pages • 2 hours read
Joyce MaynardThe Bird Hotel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A 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 Birds
The profusion of birds in the region—672 species, according to the book Irene finds—symbolize the lush diversity of life surrounding La Llorona, a contrast to the weeping, solitary woman embodied by the name of the property. The color and noise of the birds become part of the nourishing sensory background that helps Irene feel she is coming back to life when she arrives at the hotel. The birds mark the natural rhythms of the days and seasons that prevail in this rural area, a contrast to the human-built world of San Francisco, Irene’s prior home. The birds and their beauty provide the inspiration that moves Irene to rediscover her love of art and buy a pencil. When Leila gifts her the paints she once bought for her daughter, returning to her art proves a healing, meditative exercise that helps Irene reconstruct a sense of identity after her devastating loss.
Just as the conures sent her south from San Francisco, Irene entertains the thought of a connection with Jerome, who is brought to her through the birds and her paintings of them, again a symbol of the healing power of nature and art. As Irene notes, “Even when something very sad happens, even when someone dies, the birds don’t stop singing” (137); after the storm, she believes the birds sing more loudly, as if warding off a sense of despair. At the conclusion, Irene renames La Llorona the Bird Hotel, which is symbolic of the healing she has undergone from being the weeping woman to returning to life and finding purpose and love. As Leila promised, these birds, a symbol of beauty and renewal, have healed Irene’s heart.
The Jocote Tree
The jocote is a deciduous tree native to Mexico and Central America. They can grow up to 16 feet high, and the fruit, sweet when ripe, has long been part of the diet of regional peoples. The fruit is also thought to confer medicinal benefits. This tree is an example of this landscape’s novelty to Irene and a symbol of its healing power. While Leila tried to cultivate her property with plants she found from all over, the jocote is a native species and becomes a symbol of the property and what it means to its owners in terms of home and shelter.
When Gus is proposing enhancements to Irene’s property, he suggests hanging a red light in the tree. When Gus and Dora take over the property, they hang a red light in the jocote tree that shines all night, the garish light a constant reminder of what Gus and Dora have taken from Irene. Yet the jocote tree, unlike the herbal crop, survives the lava flow erupting from the volcano, and when she gives Gus and Dora’s old property back to local families so they might use the land for farms and homes, Irene is restoring to the native inhabitants what was rightfully theirs. They bring her fruit from the jocote tree in return, which illustrates how Irene has herself become part of life in La Esperanza. The tree remains as a symbol of how this land has nourished and restored her when her life was destroyed by grief, and its restoration as a plant that can provide food for the local community, and not just a source of entertainment for visiting tourists, is in line with the novel’s themes of restoration and reconciliation.
The Volcano
El Fuego, as the volcano is named in the novel, is at first merely a symbol of the foreign geography and culture of La Esperanza and the new country where Irene has made her home. What is taken for granted by the locals—the volcano has always been there, Irene observes—is strange and wondrous to her and other tourists like Sam Halloway. The volcano becomes the scene of several revelations: Jun Lan locates the baby-making herb on its slopes, Harriet Halloway realizes while hiking the volcano that her new husband doesn’t care about her welfare, and Irene, stranded on the slope overnight with Jerome, realizes she doesn’t want to marry again without romantic love.
When the volcano erupts, it becomes more than an inert feature of the landscape: It represents the power of nature, or chance, to alter the course of human life in seconds—just as a traffic accident altered Irene’s life by taking her husband and son from her. Elmer rescues Mirabel from her grandmother’s home at the foot of the volcano, a feat that demonstrates his faithful love as well as the courage people can show when confronting disaster, and Mirabel tries to preserve her child from the eruption by setting him afloat on the lake, a similar gesture of protection. When Irene jumps into the lake to save the baby—conquering her lifelong fear of water in the process—she too demonstrates both courage and love. In the end, the volcano is both the source of incredible loss but also a symbol of endurance and renewal. The ash deposited on the ground makes for rich farmland that can support families, and the villagers of La Esperanza rebuild, showing their resilience, tenacity, and their own power to endure, even as the shadow of the volcano, guardian and threat, remains ever in their view.
The Fireflies
The fireflies that only emerge on one night every year are an invention of Maynard’s, one that underlines the novel’s philosophical message about finding joy in the present moment and feeling gratitude for what is rather than dwelling on what is not. Irene first learns of the fireflies and their significance from Leila, part of the mentoring Leila offers in preparing Irene to run La Llorona, though Irene doesn’t know it yet. Thereafter, the fireflies appear to signal magical or transformative moments, particularly when Jun Lan finds the baby-making herb that will fulfill her dream of bearing a child, and again when Irene realizes she has fallen in love with Tom. At the end of the novel, the reappearance of the fireflies, out of their usual season, is Irene’s sign to break out of her contented life and take the risk to locate Tom, forgive him for keeping a secret, and let love back into her life.
