40 pages • 1 hour read
The Gathering
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Symbols & Motifs
Corporeality
Content Warning: This section of the guide analyzes the source text’s graphic depiction of the sexual abuse of children, grief, addiction, and death by suicide.
Corporeality is defined as the fact of physically existing. In The Gathering, corporeality symbolizes mortality, loss, and awareness of being alive. After Liam’s death, Veronica becomes hyper-aware that all humans are fragile physical entities. She is as sensitive to the bodies of strangers as of her children and her husband. Her newfound sensitivity heightens her emotional turmoil in the wake of Liam’s death, in part because every body is a reminder of her loss. When Veronica and her siblings gather for Liam’s wake, she sees Liam’s body as a reminder of his loss of self: “All the Hegarty children have a hangover, including the one in the box […] Liam has the biggest one, of all, of course, because Liam finally got really wasted […] He will be sleeping his one off, for a while” (228). In death, Liam is free from the pain that informs the lived experience. Veronica, still alive, will have her hangover.
Corporeality is ultimately an inspiration to keep living. When Veronica visits St. Ita’s mass grave site, she feels attacked by the spirits: “They have me by the thighs. I am gripped at the thighs by whatever feeling this is […] It clutches at me, skitters between my clothes and my skin. It lifts every hair. It grazes my lip. And is gone” (161). Veronica experiences the sense of hair lifting and lips grazing and being clutched at. These sensations are possible only because she is alive. It is a prescient reminder to Veronica that despite her grief and guilt, she is very much alive and must continue living.
Memory
Memory is an important motif throughout The Gathering. Veronica’s first-person narrative point of view is informed by her journey grappling with the verity and importance of her memory. Her mission is to use memory to honor Liam and understand his death, but memory is unreliable, and at risk of being twisted by expectations and repression.
Veronica wants to get the story right “Because there are effects. We know that. We know that real events have real effects. In a way that unreal events do not. Or nearly real. Or whatever you call the events that play themselves out in my head. We know there is a difference between the brute body and the imagined body” (223). Veronica realizes the danger of imagination. Imagination can be freeing and comforting, but it can also rob an individual of their humanity because it avoids what truly happened. At the same time, she acknowledges that it can be difficult to distinguish between memory and imagination.
Veronica does fictionalize the past when she tries to imagine her grandmother Ada’s meeting both Charlie and Nugent. But that narrative path leaves Veronica at a dead end, precisely because fictionalizing a family legacy doesn’t hold the same weight as memory. When Veronica finally confronts her repressed memory of Liam’s molestation, the dark truth at the heart of Liam’s struggles is revealed and, therefore, honored. At the same time, going into deeper, darker truths of memory is difficult for Veronica because it makes her question whether she too was molested by Nugent. Veronica’s internal conflict is thus based on the very thing that will help her move through grief: memory.
Death
In The Gathering, death is an important motif that develops the overall tone of melancholy and grief.
The central external conflict in the novel is Liam’s death by suicide. Veronica’s grief over Liam’s death is inextricably tied to feelings of guilt and responsibility. Death therefore becomes a metaphor of the all the things Veronica didn’t do while Liam was alive, including defending him or showing up for him more. Grappling with Liam’s death also requires that Veronica grapple with her own life. Through death, Veronica grows as a character because she discovers what she truly wants out of her life. Death also brings the Hegarty family back together again, a rare occurrence, which means death is also a symbolic unifier.
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By Anne Enright
