49 pages • 1 hour read
Ugly Love
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Symbols & Motifs
Water
Hoover’s depiction of water conforms to the traditional symbolism of water as a means of birth and renewal, as well as death. The author also uses water to subvert romance tropes. Every time Tate is around Miles, she becomes “only liquid.” By this, she means her boundaries erode. Tate doesn’t say what she really thinks, and she essentially melts into Miles, whom she views as “solid.”
Due to their unequal relationship, Tate loses her sense of self and self-respect. Instead of being firm in her convictions, she emotionally bends to please Miles: “Well, that’s embarrassing. Now he knows exactly how much I’m not Tate when I’m near him. I’m liquid. Conforming. Doing what he asks, doing what I’m told, doing what he wants me to do” (174). Every time she is liquid, she has no boundaries, and her will takes the shape of whatever Miles dictates.
Several of the novel’s most pivotal scenes occur around water, like the day Tate and Miles leave dinner and stand in the rain together:
The sporadic drops turn into sprinkles, which then turn into full-on rain, but neither of us has moved. Neither of us is making a mad dash for the car. The rain is sliding down my skin, down my neck, into my hair, and soaking my shirt. My face is tilted toward the sky, but my eyes are closed now. There’s nothing in the world that compares to the feel and smell of brand-new rain. As soon as that thought crosses my mind, warm hands meet my cheeks and slide to the nape of my neck, stealing the strength from my knees and the air from my lungs. His height is shielding me from most of the rain now, but I keep my eyes closed and tilted toward the sky. His lips come down gently over mine, and I find myself comparing the feel and smell of brand-new rain to his kiss. (154)
This scene in the rain is particularly important because it is a traditional romantic trope (the kiss in the rain), but it’s within the scope of a nontraditional relationship that often feels anything but romantic. By giving Tate this beautiful rainy-day kiss with Miles, Hoover lets her dwell in her idealism, which makes it all the harder when it fails her. What is supposed to be romantic and loving is not, no matter how much it feels right—at least not until Tate stops “treading water” (264) and Miles confronts his own trauma surrounding water.
Miles’s car crashes into a lake on the way home from the hospital with his baby, Clayton, and his love, Rachel. He desperately tries to free both of them but only has time to save one. He saves Rachel, and by the time he gets to Clayton, it’s too late: “The water is everywhere. I can’t see him anymore” (270). This mirrors a line Miles says earlier when he and Tate are in the shower together—that he can’t see anything.
Orange Juice
Orange juice is a symbol of hidden desire. When Tate needs an excuse to slink into the kitchen at her parents’ house and see if Miles is there, she pretends to get orange juice. This innocuous act allows her to spend time with him and launches their initial arrangement as they discuss the sexual tension between them. Later in the book, when Miles has Tate over to have sex for the first time, he has a paper bag that he’s guarding. He bought condoms, but he also “pulls out a container of orange juice, and the simple fact that he even thought about it is a testament to his generosity” (110).
While Tate sees this act of kindness towards her, she doesn’t recognize his hidden desire. The overt desire, the condoms, is obvious, but the orange juice is Miles’s way of being thoughtful because he really cares about Tate and wants that emotional connection with her, even if he can’t allow himself to have it yet. Miles plays on his foreknowledge of Tate’s preference for orange juice. In proactively buying the item for Tate in advance, Miles signals his interest in Tate.
Doors and Doorways
Doors and doorways are a motif that highlights the theme of Relationship Boundaries Versus Emotional Walls. When Tate first meets Miles, he is sitting outside her door, crying and drunk in the hallway. Miles’s signature way of entering a room is by knocking while entering at the same time. He expects others’ doors to be open, though he always announces himself before coming in. Tate, however, is always forced to knock and wait at his door. The one time she uses his method of knocking while entering, he gets upset with her:
I realize I forgot to knock as soon as I close the door to his apartment. I always knock. I guess my mentioning in a text that I was coming over after I changed seemed good enough to me, but the way Miles is staring at me from the doorway of his bedroom makes me think he doesn’t like that I didn’t knock. (250)
Doors act as a motif for Tate’s lack of boundaries since Miles can pass through hers without even a second thought, while his door is firmly guarded. The notion of Miles’s door being representative of an emotional wall comes to the fore after their first sexual encounter. He kisses her and asks, “Can you lock the door on your way out?” (121). He won’t allow emotional intimacy between them, so kicking her out right after sex and locking the door is a way of reaffirming his emotional unavailability. When having unprotected sex with Tate reminds him of his child with Rachel, “[h]is bedroom door slams shut” (185), leaving Tate alone with her tears and feelings of being shut out.
As Tate is leaving the apartment to move out, she knocks on Miles’s door to say goodbye, out of either “braveness or desperation” (284). When they get back together, Miles waits outside Tate’s door just like the first time they met. Even though Tate still holds her boundary, she doesn’t let her door become a wall the way Miles’s did when she left: “My trembling hand pushes open the door to my apartment” (305). Doors are a recurring representation of the boundaries people use to protect themselves. However, no matter how solid they are, even if they’re locked, they are not walls. Emotional doors can be opened with the right key.
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By Colleen Hoover
