Bridge of Clay

“A family of ramshackle tragedy. A comic book kapow of boys and blood and beasts. We were born for relics like these.”

Matthew sets the tone of the rest of the novel by reducing the family history and family members to simple descriptors. The relics in question are fragments of their father’s past that the boys welcome home in the frame narrative, adding to the eclectic nature of their home and history.

“A murderer should probably do many things, but he should never, under any circumstances, come home.”

Matthew foreshadows the rejection and violence to take place later in the novel because of Michael’s actions. This first chapter introduces the concept of Michael as a murderer, having symbolically killed his family by leaving the boys alone. This quote is revisited at the novel’s conclusion after the family has reconciled, adding to the cyclical nature of the story.

“He had no idea how long it took for Henry and Tommy to be either side, and the dog, tongue out, at the epitaphs. Each boy stood, slouched yet stiff, hands in pockets. If the dog had pockets, she’d have had her paws in them too, for sure. All attention was then given to the gravestone and the flowers in front of it, wilting before their eyes.”

This scene encompasses the respect the Dunbar boys live with and the grief they carry with them in their daily lives. They visit their mother’s grave to clean it and give her new flowers but cannot bring themselves to stand upright. They show that they have their own way of honoring their mother despite the chaos that controls their lives. This quote also provides an example of how Zusak anthropomorphizes the boys’ pets, a tactic used to ground their importance for the boys.

“She had auburn hair and good-green eyes, and was apprenticed to Ennis McAndrew. Her favorite horse was Matador. Her favorite race was always the Cox Plate. Her favorite winner of the race was the mighty Kingston Town, a good three decades before. (The best stuff happens before we’re born). The book she read was The Quarryman. One of three important to everything.”

Matthew makes time and space early in the novel to describe Carey and the things that bind her to Clay. He describes her rather than reveals things over time because her presence is vital for the reader to understand Clay and his motivations. This description also establishes how integral racing is for her because races both connect her to Clay and result in her death.

“All that remained was to get to camp, learn English better, find a job and a place to live. Then, most importantly, buy a bookshelf. And a piano.”

Penelope’s priorities when arriving in Australia show how highly she values education and music. She wishes to honor her family history and present her mythologies on a bookshelf, just as she wants to integrate herself into music again. Penelope values her history, laying the foundation of the importance she places on storytelling. The books and piano become vital to the Dunbar lore.

“Returning and being let in: Two very different things.”

Clay and Matthew have witnessed first-hand the profound difference between returning to a place and being accepted there, having watched their father struggle and fail at that same endeavor just days prior. When Matthew starts to say goodbye to Clay, the potential exile of the moment is made apparent. The reader knows what is at stake for Clay, making his efforts to reconcile with his father even more powerful when he chooses to pursue them.

“I was hit by a terrible numbing sadness in that office, in its sort-of-dark, sort-of-fluorescent-light. There’d be no other school, no other anything. This was it, and we all knew it.”

Matthew mourns the future Clay does not yet perceive as he comes to terms with the fact that Clay is leaving to help their father with the bridge. Matthew sees this as an end and not a beginning, showing his short-sightedness and how he can be an unreliable narrator because he cannot see past his own judgment.

“One thing I know: That bridge will be made of you.”

Carey gives permission to leave the city as she also gives the book its title. Carey knows and understands Clay’s needs better than his own brothers. This insight allows her to grant him permission to leave for Silver and to engage in an act of reconciliation.

“Clay looked at him, right in the Adam’s apple. ‘Don’t worry, it’s too late,’ and Rory knew better than anyone—that Clay was already ready; he’d been training for this for years now, and I could kill him all I wanted. Clay just wouldn’t die.”

The years Clay has spent punishing himself have turned him into a sturdy person who can handle the cruelties of life. Although Rory warns Clay about the violence that will await him in the city, Clay is wholly unbothered by these threats because he knows his endurance is stronger than anything Matthew can give him. He has made himself resilient to physical harm, placing him in the singular role of being able to bridge the gap between father and brothers.

“As you can see, in many ways, he was almost the perfect other half of Penelope; they were identical and opposite, like designed or destined symmetry. Where she came from a far-off watery place, his was remote and dry. Where he was the single son of an only mother, she was the only daughter of a single man. And lastly, as we’re about to see—and this was the greatest mirror, the surest parallel of fate—while she was practicing Bach, Mozart, Chopin, he was obsessing on an art form of his own.”

This quote underscores that Love Is Omnipotent. While musing about his family history, Matthew shows all the ways that Michael and Penelope were made for each other despite the literal oceans that separate them in their younger years. It encourages the reader to think about fate and destiny as well as how powerful love is.

“In Penelope’s case (and this embarrassed her) she would often wander around the block a few times, purely for the handful of seconds it took to walk by the front of his house. Would he be on the porch? Would the light be on in the kitchen? Would he come out and ask her inside for coffee or tea, or anything at all?”

Matthew highlights the parallels between Michael’s courtship with Abbey and Penelope’s desire to see Michael again. Penelope seeks him out despite Michael’s past hurts and manages to get him to open his heart once again.

“And next (and this was an extension of the first), he didn’t confess that somewhere in his murkiest depths, he wasn’t so much afraid of being left again as condemning someone else to second best. Such was how he’d felt for Abbey, and the life he’d once had, and lost.”

Michael’s hesitancy to find love again is fed through the trauma he has experienced at the hands of a partner. He believes that he cannot find something that feels the same way as his first love, a lack of belief that Penelope helps him overcome. This hurdle contributes to why Michael breaks down so significantly at Penelope’s death; he has been hurt beyond what he thought possible twice, causing him to leave his sons to hide from the hurt.

“And these days, so often, I think of it, and I wish that I just could have been there. As the one who’d be next to beat him up, and bring him down, and punish him hard for his sins, I wish I’d somehow known everything. I’d have held him, and quietly told him. I’d have said to him, Clay, come home.”

Matthew foreshadows revelations to come later in the text by referencing the objects associated with the revelations and by highlighting his own grief at how he treated Clay in the past. Matthew shows that he was an unreliable narrator for some of the novel’s timeline, too compelled by his own grief and rage to see a fuller picture. It also showcases the power of familial reconciliation, as in doing so, Matthew overcomes significant internal trials.

“Clay—it was so damn good to see him…but no. My shoulders fell, but barely; I couldn’t show how much I didn’t want to. I had to look willing and sure.”

Matthew denies himself the pleasure of Clay’s arrival, believing that he must punish Clay for his betrayal. This internal debate shows how conflicted Matthew is about his feelings for reconciliation, as he is prevented from healing by his own pride.

“As I said, though, such moments were isolated, and they would soon reconvene at the piano: Our symbol of boyhood misery. But their island of calm in the maelstrom.”

As much as the Dunbar boys hate the piano, the Dunbar parents find it to be a source of comfort and a place to reconcile. This difference in perspective shows how not everything can be passed down from generation to generation.

“And what else? What else was there, as we skip the years like stones?”

Now that he has more insight on what is to come, Matthew uses a simile to highlight how they did not linger in their memories while they made them as children. They jumped through their lives with limited acknowledgment of what those lives contained. It is not until Penelope is dead and Michael has left that they realize the way they were sheltered and happy, reinforcing that hindsight provides more knowledge than can be anticipated in the moment.

“‘Hey, Clay,’ he said, and shook his head, and smiled just slight and slightedly. ‘Tell me what he’s like these days.’”

Henry becomes the first brother to ask about their father, beginning to bridge the gap between father and son. This curiosity shows that he is open to love and reconciliation, just as Clay is. It is the beginning of the forgiveness that becomes central to the novel’s conclusion, the first of many steps toward healing.

“She laughed and he felt her breath, and he thought about the warmness, how people were warm like that, from inside to out; how it could hit you and disappear, then back again, and nothing was ever permanent—”

Clay cherishes a private moment with Carey that also foreshadows her death. He compares her existence to her breath, two things that are tied together and soon to end.

“The coffin-slide into the fire. It was sort of like the piano, really, but the instrument’s homely cousin. You could dress it up all you wanted; it was still just a piece of hardwood, with daisies thrown on top.”

At Penelope’s funeral, Matthew compares the coffin to the piano, both items which contain an important piece of Penelope. The coffin holds her body while the piano holds her memory. Although the coffin is destroyed, the piano remains, memorialized in their living room.

“We dreamed in our rooms and slept. We were boys but also miraculous: We lay there, living and breathing—For that was the night he’d killed us. He’d murdered us all in our beds.”

This is the moment that the Dunbar boys name their father the Murderer. His abandonment is equated to killing, as he leaves the boys without their childhood. This is the beginning of the boys’ rage and a split from which Matthew believes they will never revert, not knowing the depth of Michael’s grief or the connection he still has with Clay.

“He went over and brought the boy closer. He grabbed his neck in his arm and hugged him. Our dad became his father.”

This intimate moment between Clay and Michael sees the two men bonding over how much they miss Penelope. In embracing Clay and providing him with support, Michael finally crosses the threshold back into family after his previous abandonment. He and Clay emerge from this encounter with a better understanding of each other.

“But then they returned to hurting again. There was guilt for enjoying anything. Especially the joy of forgetting.”

An aspect of mourning that both Clay and McAndrew experience is a sense of guilt at being alive while Carey is dead. They dislike living with her absence and cannot fathom a happy world without her in it. Even the moments they do enjoy are replaced with grief when they remember what they have lost. This is one of the moments that shows how Grief Has Many Forms.

“As he took her towards that note he heard, from the light to the smoke in the doorway, Clay could be totally certain; the last thing Penelope had seen in the world was a length of that wire and its color—the pegs on the clothesline, above them: As weightless as sparrows, and bright in the light. For a moment they eclipsed the city. They took on the sun, and won.”

The inception of Clay carrying the clothes pegs is as he helps carry Penelope into the garage to die by suicide. They come to represent Clay’s guilt in his role in her death as much as he carries them to memorialize his mother. The pegs are described as victorious on the day of Penelope’s death, contrasted to how she loses her own battle to cancer.