55 pages • 1 hour read
Bitter in the Mouth
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Symbols & Motifs
Mythology of North Carolina
Many chapters begin with pieces of three stories related to North Carolinian origin myths. Within the novel, these stories come from a book on North Carolina history given to a young Linda by Thomas so that she might learn more about her home (this act is one of many that take on greater significance with the revelation that Linda is adopted). Linda—both the child and the older narrator—is fascinated with three stories, primarily: the story of Orville and Wilbur Wright; the story of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World; and the story of George Moses Horton, a slave who composed and sold poems in Chapel Hill. All three stories are real stories outside of the novel, although the details are sometimes altered or created, and the story of Virginia Dare is a mythological one that involves magicians and deer.
Many chapters begin with a few paragraphs of Linda’s retelling of a story, only reaching the conclusion at the end. Linda does not explicitly inform the reader how these stories connect to the larger narrative, but all three are in some way about people who are somehow overlooked or oppressed—including the Wright Brothers story, which includes an unnamed boy that grabs Linda’s attention, as well as a focus on Wilbur, in whom Linda is fascinated because it is often overlooked that although his flight was not first that day, it was longest. More broadly, though, the stories reinforce the fluidity, and necessity, of an origin story, regardless of the details—something Linda works toward through the end of the novel, yet never fully achieves.
Letters
Letter-writing as a form of communication recurs throughout the novel. Most prominently, we see letters written between Kelly and Linda, some 1,370 of them by the conclusion of the book—Kelly’s original, precocious letter to Linda marks the start of their friendship, and although there are sometimes long absences, letters remain their unique form of connection and communication. In part, of course, communicating via the written word is better for Linda due to her incomings, although Kelly, unlike anyone else, is aware of them, and the letters begin in the 1970s, prior to the age of electronic communication. However, even after the advent of email, Linda and Kelly still continue to write and mail letters, and Linda suggests that she has a certain pride in their resistance to email. This mirrors their larger balance between tradition and progress, and is further seen in Harper’s own preference of sending letters or postcards, rather than emails, once he begins traveling abroad.
The Reasonable Man
The Reasonable Man is a legal standard used to judge a person’s actions—the idea is that in considering individual cases, a person’s actions should be judged against what a reasonable man would do in any given situation. Linda returns to the idea of the Reasonable Man because, as she says, as soon as she learned about the concept in law school, she immediately recognized her father and his lifelong effort to be personally responsible and fundamentally reasonable.
However, though Linda frequently invokes the concept, she makes clear early on that she finds it to be one fraught with problems and inconsistencies. She notes, for example, that in many cases, the Reasonable Man standard seemed to mirror closely Christian doctrine, and she compares it to the later motto, “What Would Jesus Do?”. Further, she raises the satiric example of a murderous spouse: i.e., courts at the time thought that a Reasonable Man couldn’t be held responsible for shooting his spouse dead if he were to catch her cheating as he would likely be reacting emotionally, but that it would not be reasonable for that same man to go out, buy a gun, and return to shoot his wife. Linda points out that this leads to the rather unreasonable logical conclusion that the Reasonable Man would have to have a gun available at all times, ready to be used on a cheating spouse, so as not to be charged with murder in the case that it happens. As a result, in many ways, the Reasonable Man standard becomes a version of tradition and convention—something in her world that is presented as logical and normal, but in fact allows for rather horrific outcomes.
Synesthesia and Linda’s Incomings
Language is very different for Linda, and the novel represents this through a unique method of storytelling in which dialogue is presented along with the incomings that Linda experiences. This can make for a difficult reading experience at times, but it mirrors the difficulty Linda herself experienced, especially before she learned how to navigate the incomings a bit better—for example, Linda had to start smoking to manage her incomings enough to become a good student. This leads to interesting outcomes and situations for her, and as a result, language and its difficulty is a recurring motif throughout the novel. Linda likes or dislikes people and activities often based on her incomings—for example, both Wade and Leo’s names provide pleasant tastes for Linda, and she enjoys the study of law because the legal profession requires a whole separate vocabulary, which not only gave Linda frequent new experiences, but also a very different, pleasurable work experience. As with many other areas of the book, Linda’s experience—and thus, the reader’s—is one which takes two typically disparate experiences, that of language and that of taste, and puts them together in rather jarring ways.
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