64 pages • 2 hours read
Liane MoriartyHere One Moment
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Monte Carlo Biscuits
Monte Carlo biscuits are a real Australian cookie, with biscuit layers enclosing a creamy vanilla and raspberry filling. Cherry’s favorite biscuit, they represent logic and free will. When Cherry relates how her father died in a lightning strike, she compares the unlikely event to the “Monte Carlo fallacy” (193). This is the false belief that the probability of future events changes based on past events.
Cherry finds the fact of “statistical independence” so comforting that she always thinks of it when she eats her favorite cookie. She is horrified to see her friend Bert bite into one instead of savoring it slowly. Bert replies, “I like to live dangerously, Cherry” (201)—a memory so discomforting that Cherry refuses to eat anything, even Monte Carlo biscuits, the night before her flight to Sydney. At this point in the story, her beloved logic has no power to cure her grief.
Cherry puts a plate of the biscuits out when she meets Paula to tell her that she has no ability to see the future and that it was pure chance that any of her predictions came true. She is essentially using logic to reassure Paula. Finally, she gives Monte Carlo biscuits to Bridie during her math tutoring sessions. Teaching Bridie is one of the reasons she begins trying to live again after Ned’s death, and the biscuits are a sign that logic has once again come to her rescue.
Seagulls
Seagulls represent the agent of chaos in the butterfly effect theory. Moriarty uses the symbol to show that chaos is not necessarily bad.
As Cherry is aware, the original animal used to describe the butterfly effect was a seagull, not a butterfly. In math, chaos represents the seemingly random patterns that can arise within systems that have fixed rules, such as weather and the economy, due to initial conditions. Small variations in initial conditions can make the systems impossible to predict with complete accuracy.
Cherry compares her behavior on the plane to that of a “less poetic seagull” whose actions had consequences “which had consequences, which had consequences” (156). Her predictions on the plane are the “initial condition” that causes chaos, disrupting the everyday lives of the passengers. After the death of Kayla Halfpenny, she muses, “the flap of a seagull’s wing and everything changes” (225).
For Ethan, the random actions of a seagull set into motion positive change. He is nearly attacked by Jasmine’s ex-boyfriend, but an attack by a seagull saves him. Through the different characters, Moriarty shows that the butterfly effect is not good or bad by itself; it is simply a real force at work in the world, and its effects cannot be predicted with complete accuracy.
Birthdays
Birthdays serve as a reminder of the constant presence of death. Everyone who is born will also die, as Mae reminds Cherry: “We’re all going to die, Cherry” (389). The advent or arrival of a birthday drives the story forward for all the “cursed” point-of-view characters because Cherry has tied their cause of death to a particular age.
Birthdays also bring death to characters who were not on the flight. Harvey died before his 30th birthday party. Mae dies a week before her 60th birthday. Cherry and Ned are planning a cruise for her 70th when Ned dies. Even a cab driver crows to Leo that his aunt died a minute before midnight on her 60th birthday.
Birthdays are an appropriate motif given Cherry’s profession as an actuary. Her job is to make predictions regarding the likelihood that a person who belongs to a certain group “will die before their next birthday” (478).
Doctors
Doctors are seen as a modern-day equivalent of psychics. Sue O’Sullivan introduces this motif in Chapter 6 when she replies, to her husband’s statement that nobody can see the future: “Oncologists can […] Oncologists, neurologists, cardiologists, hematologists. All those damned ‘ologists.’ They’re the fortune tellers” (29).
Because her mother’s death could have been prevented had she seen a doctor in time, Cherry has nothing but contempt for people who refuse to get their symptoms checked out. Mae’s refusal stemmed from her belief that fate is predetermined. Cherry illustrates her disbelief by taking precautions, especially going to the doctor: “You do your health checks. You don’t ignore symptoms” (161).
Logical, math-loving Cherry knows that doctors are not infallible. Like people in her own profession, actuaries, they rely on statistics. If a doctor tells you 99 out of 100 people die of your disease, she thinks, “[Y]ou most likely will die, but you might also be the one who beats the odds” (484). She concludes that it is all “just math.”
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By Liane Moriarty
