In Five Years

Literary foils are characters who are constructed in a way to accentuate the qualities of another character. Bella functions as a literary foil for Dannie, who leans into defining them as yin and yang, opposites that coordinate. She casts herself as rational, careful, and organized, leaving for Bella the role of emotional, flighty, and impulsive. As Dannie’s understanding of herself and her friend deepens, her perspective on this relationship shifts. They remain foils, but Dannie recognizes the value in the parts of Bella that she had defined herself against. Instead of seeing Bella as whimsical by nature, she realizes that Bella has made a choice to fill her life with the things that make her feel alive. Dannie, on the other hand, has made a choice to fill her life with things that make her feel that she is in control. In the clarity of hindsight, Dannie realizes after Bella’s death that Bella was not ruled by emotion the way she’s thought; instead, she sees that she herself has been ruled by caution and reason.