Fellowship Point

Content Warning: This section of the guide refers to depression, which is depicted in the novel.

During their stay on Fellowship Point, Agnes, Polly, and other characters frequently visit the cemetery. There, all of their immediate family members are buried. They walk among the graves, visiting the deceased relatives and speaking with them as if they can hear the conversation. In this way, both women express not a macabre or fearful view of death but one of respect and honor. The share owners’ descendants choose to be buried on the Point rather than near their permanent homes in Philadelphia, which speaks to the Point’s importance in their lives. In this way, too, the cemetery reinforces the theme of Aging and Death in that both women speak frequently of their own deaths, acknowledging its inevitability and approaching it not with fear but with a kind of appreciation for the opportunity to reunite with family.

The cemetery becomes a problematic place when Nan is injured by a falling headstone. That it is Agnes’s father’s headstone, which hasn’t yet been installed properly, causes Agnes some feelings of guilt. In an attempt to right the damage done to Nan, Agnes has all of the headstones removed and replaced with flat markers.