51 pages • 1 hour read
Madeleine ThienSimple Recipes
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2001A 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
Houses
Thien uses houses as both a symbol and a motif. She constructs character development through houses, creating conflict and tension to symbolize immigration, alienation, family loss, and separation. They are also used as sources of trauma and connection. The prevalence of houses as a symbol indicates the complexity of identity and belonging.
In the story “Simple Recipes,” the house is used to show the differences between the first- and second-generation characters when the narrator discusses how they are kept and cleaned and lit. Houses are structures that contain trauma both from the immigrant perspective and the outsider perspective. A house is not always a warm place, despite the positive meaning attached to the word “home.” A house is a container for the struggle that immigrants have in identifying home.
Another example of the house as motif occurs in “Four Days from Oregon.” Here there are two houses; the one the family lives in before Irene takes the girls and leaves with Tom, and the new one they share with Tom. In the interim, their house is represented by the itinerant tent. In the first house, things are broken, doors squeak. The house takes a beating from Irene, who occasionally throws dishes and plates around, shattering them and breaking windows and doors. But in the new home, things are organized. There are photographs and mementos of their new, saner life. An evening is often spent quietly together reading books. The juxtaposition of the two houses symbolizes the change in their lives from chaotic and unhappy to quiet and peaceful.
Yet another example of home which is different from the usual use of the motif takes place in “Alchemy.” The narrator’s home is often compared to Paula’s home. At first the narrator prefers Paula’s house to hers, but by the end, when she discovers Paula’s secret, she begins to stay at her own house, realizing that, despite some hint of trauma there, it is the safer of the two. Houses contain secrets and trauma. An interesting use of the motif in this story is also the comparison of Paula’s house to the cage where the rabbits live. For Paula, the house becomes like a cage and there is no way to escape and no energy for escape. The house as a motif is often associated with a lack of safety and comfort.
Trauma
Whether it is inter-generational, immigrant-inspired or having to do with relationships (both romantic and familial), trauma is a constant motif throughout the collection of stories. In each one, the characters suffer from some sort of loss or grief, often traumatic enough that it alters or changes their view of their world and the people in it.
The various types of trauma include trauma surrounding immigration, sexual abuse, familial breakups, and suffering involved in losing love. In “Dispatch,” a long-time marriage is in danger when the wife learns of her husband’s love for another woman. The pain of this reveal is kept alive as the main character imagines the life of her husband’s beloved. The trauma is exacerbated by the character’s fear and horror of natural and human-made events.
Trauma remains prevalent throughout the stories; the author chooses to imbue her characters with traumatic conflicts that carry deep weight and create the central conflict in each story. In “Alchemy,” for example, Thien examines sexual encounters in new love alongside the trauma of sexual abuse. The narrator’s actions are informed by her experiences: with her friend’s sexual abuse and her own sexual awakening. She learns from these conflicts and eventually tells the truth about her friend’s abuse. Trauma as motif is often the driving force of a character’s arc, and resolution takes place in everyday life.
Photos and Postcards
The author often uses visual symbols to express the characters’ emotions related to their trauma. This is an especially effective method of revealing the interior world of the characters when language doesn’t suffice. Language, the author suggests, is an inferior way to communicate when there are sometimes no words to describe the pain within. When this happens, characters replace language with memorabilia.
In the title story, “Simple Recipes,” the author uses postcards and photos that allow the narrator to talk about the way immigration has impacted the family. When language fails to describe the past and the powerful conflicts in the family’s present life, the photos and postcards give the character a sometimes-simpler way of expressing memories of the past, and the perceived memories of her parents’ past.
In “Four Days from Oregon,” photos as memorabilia play important roles in the midst of the scenes that contrast the past with the present. When the father pulls the photograph from his pocket, he is able to see his past. It’s the foundational perspective that sets the course of action in the story. He is not born in the same country as his wife. It marks the differences in their experiences and constitutes a reason for the break-up of their marriage.
Likewise, when Tom takes the photograph of the girls with their mother, this picture represents what Tom is unable to articulate: that he will always be, to some extent, on the outside looking in at the tightly woven parent/child relationships that he has inherited.
The use of photos and postcards add resonance and depth to the stories. They help the narrators imagine or describe place, especially when language fails. But the photos and postcards are also used to demonstrate when a narrator is unreliable, or when history can’t be verified. The photos and postcards represent the tension between what can be spoken and what is real or fake, and what can and cannot be described. Often these elements give the stories a dream-like quality that adds to the ambiguity of the suffering caused by immigration or fractured love.
