Bitter in the Mouth

“Another important life lesson had been imparted and learned: The past was an affliction for which there was no cure.”

Although we begin by learning this lesson from Iris, and in some ways it remains reasonable and true, the novel offers a method for healing and managing, if not outright curing, the past. Iris’s maxims and beliefs are frequently undermined; although the past stays with all the characters, they nevertheless manage to be reborn into something they prefer that allows them to move on.

“It was bitter in the way that greens that were good for us were often bitter. Or in the way that simmering resentment was bitter.”

This quote, which draws on the title of the novel, describes Linda’s first memory, first taste, and first mystery. Linda has never identified the taste, nor does she remember the word that evoked it. Further, it underscores the multifaceted nature of life and truth, how the same thing can be painful or beneficial. Bitterness is complex, and in a way, she’s spent her life searching for it.

“The introduction of Dill and Wade into our letters marked the beginning of doubt. Before this, Kelly and I had experienced fear. Of the dark. Of being alone. Of monsters (imaginary and real). Doubt, however, scared us in an entirely different way.”

It's interesting to consider why doubt would be worse than fear. Fear comes from outside; doubt, on the other hand, comes from within. Fear can be conquered using the right tools, but to conquer doubt, one must become comfortable with oneself—something Kelly and Linda generally can’t do until much later.

“The appearances of Dill and Wade in our letters also marked the beginning of reticence. That word wasn’t part of my vocabulary yet. So, instead, I thought I was being selfish. The result was the same, a withholding.”

A running theme in the book is the ever-shifting concept of secrecy, or withholding, here. It’s interesting here that young Linda equates it with selfishness, particularly as we see how her relationship to the concept of selfishness is itself complicated. It’s also interesting, though, to see older Linda’s relationship with language working to understand a complex world—withholding is selfish when you don’t have the vocabulary to justify it, but reticence when you do.

“We, the adults or the survivors of our youth, traded in [the instinct to cry when disappointed] for a societal norm. We stayed calm. We swallowed the hurt. We forgave the infraction. […] The loss that resulted, of course, could not be undone. What was gone was gone. We just could no longer remember how we ended up with so much less of our selves.”

This works well with Iris’s belief that there is no cure for the past—what was gone was gone. This is how we lose ourselves, through tragic incidents from which we cannot recover.

“In this clever way, my great-uncle hid from the official history of our family. By excluding himself, he ensured that our history was a false one. Or, at the least, an incomplete one.”

Again, reticence and truth are put into conversation with one another. It might be a stretch to claim that excluding himself created a false history, particularly if Iris worked to suppress Harper due to his sexuality. The novel seems to decide that “incomplete” is not the same as “false,” and lying by omission is not the same as lying.

“History always had a point of view. That was a trick worth learning. Another was that history was what you wanted to remember.”

The nature of truth is complicated in the book. Linda doesn’t make this claim in jest, as evidenced by her conclusions toward the end of the novel. This is rather an acknowledgement that we must always wrestle with competing truths.

“As a father, [Thomas] was generous. More or less. The ‘less’ was because he never gave me what I wanted. He gave me only what he wanted me to have. I found his was often true with philanthropy and with love. The giver’s desire and fulfillment played an important role.”

It's unclear here to what extent Linda makes this claim ironically. One might be tempted to view this as recognizing that she, as a child, might not have known what she wanted, or what was best for her, but connecting it to later selfishness and infantilization undermines the idea that Thomas was, in fact, being generous in his actions.

“The [Wright] brothers knew that their true achievement wasn’t flight but flight accompanied by a safe landing. Icarus flew. It was how he descended that determined why his story was told and retold.”

Although truth is relative, as noted above, this quotation reminds us that the impact of our actions matters, as well. Without effective execution, the attempt—or, e.g., our reasoning for our actions—is suspect.

“But let me ask this question. How old were you when you first touched yourself for the sake of pleasure? Your body and its attendant parts were always there, were they not? But we all have to learn how to use what we were born with for something other than the functional and the obvious. All of our bodies hold within them secret chambers and cells.”

The psychological concept of “functional fixedness” suggests that we become so used to particular functions of something that we can’t recognize alternative uses or possibilities. Linda is describing something similar here in recognizing that even though it might seem obvious in retrospect, or from the outside, for her it was a major step.

“Some people were smart like a diamond. Kelly, for example. Reflective, impressive clarity, beautiful to have around. When I was in college and especially in law school, I realized that the people around me were smart like a whip. Scarring, thought-clearing, exhilarating, and best to be avoided.”

It's worth noting that despite her intelligence, Kelly ends up dropping out of high school to have a child, then remains in Boiling Springs, suggesting that the whips here manage to overpower the diamonds. This also raises the question of with which Linda identifies.

“[Wade’s mother] was the community’s cautionary tale against beachside hotels, blond highlights, clingy shirts, exposed knees, flirty headbands, and hard liquor. She was the fantasy for all these things as well.”

This quote highlights the double-standard often imposed on women, also sometimes known as the “Madonna-Whore Dichotomy.” The complexity of the situation is ignored in favor of reductive views of Wade’s mother and her actions. Further, her critics were hypocritical, shaming her for these things while simultaneously lusting after her.

“The thing about grass was that it grew back. The thing about rapists was that they would do it again. The thing about fate was that it often looked like the handiwork of a vengeful God.”

This could be viewed as meta-commentary on the narrative structure, which employs a deus-ex-machina-style approach to rid the story, and thus Linda, of Bobby. However, it might also be a caution against ascribing too much to fate—Linda’s experience might lead her to believe that this was divine intervention, but the reality is that it was mere coincidence.

“The insult, like everything after a death, was intended for the living.”

It’s not clear yet why this is an insult, but this is the most overt reference to Linda’s ethnicity, as jade holds significance in many Asian cultures. It is also the closest we come to an explanation as to why the Hammericks no longer speak to Thomas—Linda explains earlier that Thomas’s other indiscretions were not enough to warrant banishment, but never explicitly states what did earn it.

“George Moses’s mother had taught him well. Words, he understood, were beautiful because they could reveal the truth and hide it at the same time.”

This connects to the theme of language, truth, and Linda’s complicated relationship with both those things. Language, for both Linda and George, becomes something that can be shaped, a power that can be harnessed.

“The man took off his eyeglasses and sat down on the floor, resting his back against the side of the bed. I could no longer see his face, but I could see his shoulders slowly rising and falling. He was taking the deliberate, steady breaths of a man attempting to calm himself. I didn’t understand these movements back then, so I thought he was crying. I stopped my own tears because I thought it would stop his. Wasn’t this the beginning of love?”

The novel wrestles with conceptions of love, beginning with Linda’s relationship with Baby Harper. Here, Linda defines love—or at least the love of a small child—as feeling concern for the emotional well-being of someone else. This conception will return in subtle ways throughout.

“As a grandmother, [Iris] had the duty to protect me from harm, to teach me right from wrong […] and to endure, on her part, the questioning stares of her neighbors and friends without ever once opening up her mouth. Because if she did, she would have to admit that her family wasn’t like theirs. As Iris had done with her own flesh and blood […] she would see of me what she wanted, and she would ignore the rest.”

Here, on the other hand, is an alternate conception of a very transactional kind of love. Iris views family as an obligation: You might not like the family you have, but they’re yours, and you owe it to them to be there for them. Linda, however, seems to reject that simplicity, particularly with DeAnne—although they reconcile, for a long time, there were lines that could be crossed for her.

“I hadn’t thought about my refusal to return to Boiling Springs as a habit, but it was. Like biting my fingernails or smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, the act of not returning home had an ameliorative effect on my psyche. It had begun with the idea, new and fizzy in my eighteen-year-old brain, that family was a choice and not fate. If that were true, then I chose not to have a family.”

This reinforces the above idea that conceptions of family and love, like truth, are complicated. Linda draws the conclusion that it is a choice—which makes her eventual reconciliation feel somewhat more powerful, given that she chooses it rather than feeling obligated to it.

“My great-uncle had trained my expectations, crafted for me what was normal, and answered all the questions that I never thought to ask him with plausible assumptions and givens. Most important, once these expectations were in place, he tried never to disappoint me. That was his definition of love.”

This represents yet another definition of love, one that is likely at odds with others. Linda notes that it is his definition, not the definition—as with truth, Linda allows for other possibilities and definitions.

“That was precisely what I wanted to do. Slow down time. Bus travel was the best way I knew how. […] I wanted the inefficiencies of traveling en masse and cheaply, of road-tripping with people who collectively had more time than money.”

Many areas of the novel prize the ability to actively work against the pace of society. Letter-writing is one; travel is another. Ironically, Linda here is also traveling by bus because her mother requested it, whereas several years prior, this had been the cause of a fight when she insisted Linda fly down rather than taking a bus. That said, she acknowledges the role of choice and privilege in her decision—for most, bus travel is not a choice, but a necessity.

“The transcript stated that while Mrs. Ostorp had one of the rarest […] of the fifty-four known forms of synesthesia, her case would always remain a question mark because she never agreed to a cerebral blood-flow test […]. In other words, there was no proof of Mrs. Ostorp’s world except for her own words, which couldn’t be relied upon. Insufficient. Unreliable. Refutable.”

Linda here critiques the idea that personal experience is insufficient evidence. This dovetails with the larger question of the nature of truth with which the novel engages—whether there is a fundamental, objective truth that can be found, or whether the truth is dependent on experience.

“The twenty-minute drive from Shelby to Boiling Springs felt eternal, which was different from feeling like an eternity. Eternal was the feeling that the journey was ongoing and would continue whether you were along for the ride or not, that there was no hurry to reach your destination because your destination would patiently await you.”

The novel frequently plays with language in order to complicate our understanding of concepts. Here, Linda takes a minute difference and finds something fundamental in it.

“Clay and I had discussed whether or not to include a photograph from [Harper and Cecil’s] travels together in South America. We decided that those images were private, which we told each other was different from saying that they were secret.”

Likewise, Linda here differentiates between “private” and “secret” in a way that feels subtle, but profound. At the root of the difference in this case appears to be the question of audience—who is allowed to know?