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Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Regret
Throughout the novel, the motif of regret illustrates how hard it is to predict the result of individual choices. In her root life, Nora regrets nearly every choice she’s made in her life, from quitting swimming as a teenager to leaving her fiancé before her wedding to letting her cat go outdoors. These regrets calcify, closing Nora’s heart to hope and possibility, and cementing her image of herself as a selfish failure. After she attempts to end her life, Nora looks through The Book of Regrets and is so overwhelmed with despair that Mrs. Elm has to coach her to force the book closed. This illustrates the power of regret to consume Nora and to overwhelm her ability to take care of herself and be on her own side. In each alternate life she visits, Nora learns the mistaken beliefs inside her regrets. In her life as a swimmer, she finds herself lonely, angry, and depressed. She learns that her beloved cat could never have lived, no matter how good of a cat owner she was. Each of these corrections illustrate how unpredictable life can be, and that carrying regret or ruing over what might have been is an exercise in futility.
Swimming
The motif of swimming illustrates both the power of talent and the slippery nature of success. For Nora, swimming is a place where she often feels strong, confident, and in the flow of life. Many of her lives feature swimming, either professionally or as a daily ritual, and Nora feels most present in the water, where she can lose herself in the simple meditative act of moving her body. The purity of this pursuit, though, is undercut when the act of swimming gets caught up in a quest for success. In her root life, Nora gave up swimming because she didn’t like the competitive pressure and the way the sport became fraught with her father’s high expectations. External expectations corrupted the activity that otherwise brought her a sense of personal power and peace. In her life as an Olympian, Nora sees this corruption clearly when she sees how lonely and alienated a successful swimming career has made her. Nora is much happier when she is alone in the pool, without the pressure to perform or conform to others’ needs.
Philosophy
The motif of philosophy appears throughout the novel to illustrate Nora’s attempts to understand life. Nora studies philosophy in her root life and in many of her alternate lives, drawing from the ideologies of great philosophers like Thoreau to make sense of the world. Through the lens of Thoreau’s work, Nora learns to be more self-reliant and to turn inward to understand what she most wants for her life. With Thoreau as her model, she also values kindness over traditional markers of success and realizes how much comfort and inspiration she finds in a quiet life of reflection. However, as a lifelong student of philosophy, Nora often gets caught up in overthinking and makes herself miserable trying to understand life with her mind rather than living it with her entire self. This cerebral take on life causes her anxiety and despair and is one of the main habits she unlearns during her journey in the novel.
