50 pages • 1 hour read
Katherine ArdenThe Warm Hands of Ghosts
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
Ghosts
Both literal and metaphorical ghosts haunt the various characters, functioning as symbols of The Impact of Grief and Trauma on everyone involved in the war, soldiers and their families alike. Every soldier Laura meets in the hospital is haunted by at least one ghost, and even Pim, who maintains an air of cheerfulness until the end, is deeply traumatized by her losses. The novel makes it clear that no one escapes the trauma and ghosts of WWI.
Ghosts especially symbolize the inability of some characters to move past their grief and trauma. For instance, the Parkey sisters tell Laura that her ghosts—not only those of her parents but also those of the patients she has lost—trail behind her like “penitent-beads,” implying that she clings to her ghosts in a misguided need to punish herself for her perceived failures. She is unable to accept this, however, constantly insisting that she does not believe in ghosts and running when her mother’s ghost literally haunts her steps. Only when she finally confronts her ghosts face-to-face is she able to move forward. Similarly, Freddie submits to Faland’s control in a desperate attempt to run from his ghosts, especially the Canadian soldier he killed. He can only escape with Laura after he faces that memory head-on and accepts it as a part of who he has become. By contrast, Pim proves unable to face her personal ghosts—the loss of her husband and son—and instead chooses oblivion with Faland.
Crucially, ghosts are not antagonistic in the novel. They are not the enemy. Rather, the imagery of them having “warm hands” implies that they are loved ones who wish only to help the living. This underscores the novel’s broader argument about trauma: The point is not to banish trauma but to accept it.
Music
Music is a motif that appears primarily in the form of Faland’s violin playing. Faland’s music weaves through the narrative like a thread, alternately enticing, comforting, horrifying, and enraging those who hear it. Freddie likens Faland’s music to poetry, saying, “It was the poet’s alchemy, to seize the intangible or unspeakable and drag it, real, into the living world” (211). Music, then, gives voice to feelings and sensations for which concrete language is insufficient, including the horrors of WWI.
Music in some ways functions similarly to ghosts, appearing seemingly from nowhere, as when Laura hears music outside before the riot but cannot find its source. It also haunts some characters—particularly Freddie, who laments in the end that he will never hear Faland’s music again despite the trauma associated with it. However, Freddie also realizes that Faland’s music is only capable of expressing the negative and painful—rage, fear, horror, despair—and not positive emotions like love and joy, making it an ultimately incomplete evocation of the human experience and, in particular, of The Resilience of the Human Spirit.
Stories
Stories are a symbol of memory and identity, as evidenced by the fact that Freddie loses the memory of each story he tells Faland. Each of these memories holds an otherwise indelible element of his personality and character. Freddie explicitly states this when he refuses to tell Faland the story of how he met Winter, knowing it would mean losing that memory: “It was a cornerstone of the tottering edifice of his soul. All that he’d become was in that memory: fear and courage, darkness and kindness. Lose it and he’d collapse like a house of cards” (213-14). Sure enough, when he has told every story of his life to Faland, he becomes an empty shell devoid of identity or will; he must regain at least some of his memories to regain his sense of self. Thus, the narrative argues that a person is made of their stories. Each experience makes a person who and what they are.
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By Katherine Arden
