No Telephone to Heaven

Ruination is a complex symbol in No Telephone to Heaven. It is a negative symbol in the sense that it embodies the decay of Jamaica, including poverty, chaotic violence between conflicting political groups, and the abandonment of many families who flee to the US and Britain. Ruination is also a positive symbol, however, as it suggests change and development for new growth (both literal and metaphorical). Reclaiming the ruined land of Clare’s grandmother for new purposes, the revolutionary group is able to grow food not only for themselves, but for impoverished families in the community.

In No Telephone to Heaven, Cliff examines the romantic images Jamaicans receive from the media of England, (via the comic books Clare and her friends read as schoolgirls). In these comic books, English boarding schools are illustrious institutions covered in ivy (unlike the actual institution Clare later sees in Gravesend, which is cold and “Dickensian”). Cliff suggests that these images are designed to encourage Jamaicans to elevate England in their imagination, and thus maintain their lifelong allegiance to “the mother-country” (109).

The novel also critiques the nefarious “magic of television […], [Clare’s] ability to conjure images by switch, to change the images as she wished” (93), and cinemas in Jamaica, where viewers had little control over which films were shown.