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Symbols & Motifs
Simon’s Journal
Content Warning: This section briefly mentions racism, sexual assault, addiction, abuse, suicide, and violence.
Simon’s journal is a symbol that represents Simon and Vicky’s deception. The journal appears early in the novel as a means of conveying Simon’s thoughts. He buys it after meeting Lauren and chooses the green cover for its symbolic resonance: “Green for fresh and new, I suppose” (21). However, the journal turns out to be part of Simon and Vicky’s revenge plot. Rather than being a true confession of Simon’s ideas and love affair, it is a carefully constructed fictional narrative intended to ensnare Christian/Nick. The journal plays into all of Christian/Nick’s ideas of what a man like Simon might want or do, and since it confirms his biases, Christian/Nick does not stop to doubt it. The green cover might also represent the green of money and greed rather than new growth, since both Christian/Nick and Lauren are motivated primarily by their love for money.
Simon is proud of his narrative work in the diary, saying, “That was some of my best work. Full of highs and lows and melodrama, like most passionate romances” (397). The fakeness of the diary and the ease with which Christian/Nick is fooled also echo the reader’s experience with the novel, drawing attention to how readers can be fooled by false narratives.
Champagne and Glasses
When Ted Dobias brings Lauren to his home, he leaves behind a bottle of champagne and “two red-tinted plastic champagne flutes you’d buy at a convenience store” (125). Simon discovers them and keeps them in his closet for many years. To him, they symbolize the truth about his father’s character. He looks at them daily to remind himself that “[his] father wasn’t just a weak man who succumbed to a moment of temptation—he was a liar. He was a cheat” (125). Not only are these objects symbolically relevant for Simon, but they become practically useful when he leaves them at the scene of his father’s murder. The police find Lauren’s fingerprints on them, and she is framed for Ted’s death.
In the novel it is associated with tragedy and defeat rather than celebration and luxury. Jane also brings a bottle to Simon, ironically congratulating him as she admits that she knows he did it but will not be caught. Furthermore, the cheap, plastic flutes from the convenience store represent the tawdry nature of Lauren and Ted’s relationship. Crystal glasses are often given as a wedding gift to a new couple and are intended to last a lifetime. The flutes Ted and Lauren toast with are not real glass, but plastic. They are disposable and low value—neither long-lasting nor treasured. Ultimately, this proves true for the relationship as well.
The Chicago Title & Trust Building
The Chicago Title & Trust Building is a large building in downtown Chicago, near the law school where Simon works. Though it now has a different name, Simon and others remember it by the original moniker. The building has a great deal of symbolic importance for Simon. It is where his father’s law offices were in the 1990s and where he discovered his father having an affair with Lauren. It is also where he met Lauren for the first time and where she initially seduced him. Therefore, the building is associated with the loss of Simon’s boyhood innocence. It is where he lost faith in his father and learned that the image he had built up of Ted as a good person and an example was false. Though the “trust” in the building’s name refers to a legal trust, it is symbolically resonant that it is where Simon lost trust in his father.
This building is also where Simon goes to text on the burner phones every day, pretending to converse with Lauren. Simon admits that the office dredges up bad memories for him, saying, “Yes, every morning when I come here, it makes me think of my father and the law firm he had here. And yes, that brings back many an unpleasant memory” (167). Despite the fact that it is unhealthy to dwell on the past, Simon does so in an effort to find revenge. Ironically, Christian/Nick’s offices are also in the building. Thus, Simon visits every day so he can frame Christian/Nick for Lauren’s murder. Therefore, the site of Simon’s loss of childhood innocence also plays a part in his adult revenge.
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