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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Pearls
Among other treasures and family heirlooms, Vianne keeps her grandmother’s pearls in Le Jardin, hoping to some day pass them on to her own daughter. When Isabelle begins to hide valuable objects so that the Nazis do not requisition them, she warns Vianne that she might have to sell the pearls someday. Vianne is shocked; for her, the pearls symbolize her connection with the past and serve as a link to their deceased mother, who wore them on her wedding day, as did her grandmother. She imagines that someday Isabelle and Sophie will also wear the pearls when they get married, connecting all the women in the family. Ultimately, however, Vianne must give up on this dream, selling the pearls during a period of the war when food is particularly scarce. Though she is devastated about giving up this priceless heirloom, she understands that parting with it is crucial to the survival of her family. Her decision to sell the pearls reflects her changing values throughout the course of the war, as she learns how to survive against difficult odds.
Julien’s Bookshop
Before the First World War, Isabelle and Vianne’s father, Julien, played an active role in intellectual life in Paris, publishing his own poems, printing texts, and befriending thinkers and scholars. He imparts a love of literature in his daughters, who have happy memories of reading with their father during their childhood, prior to the death of their mother. In this regard, the bookshop represents Paris before the German occupation profoundly transformed the city and the lives of those who live there. When Isabelle returns to Paris during the war, she learns that Julien has closed it, preferring to shut down his business rather than serve the Nazis. When Isabelle requests to reopen the bookstore so that she can secretly use it to advance her Resistance efforts, Julien forbids her from opening the locked back room. Though Isabelle at first believes that her father only prints his poems in the back room, she later learns that he has been printing forbidden materials on behalf of the Resistance. These various, shifting uses of the bookstore reflect the changing nature of the capital city throughout the use of the war.
The ID Card
In the first chapter of the novel, an elderly Vianne prepares to leave her home of forty years for a smaller apartment in a care home. Though she is willing to leave most of her possessions behind, she decides to keep a trunk in her attic, which is filled with important objects from her past. One of those objects is a French identity card bearing the name “Juliette Gervaise.” Her son, Julien, is confused, as he is unfamiliar with the name. When he asks his mother about the card, she stays silent, as she is still unable to confront her past directly. The card, then, represents Vianne’s complicated relationship with the past. She is unable to let go of the card, but she nevertheless refuses to talk about the war or the heroic accomplishments of her younger sister Isabelle, who used this false identity in the course of her work with the French Resistance. Later, after reflecting upon her life and attending the passeurs reunion in Paris, she finally decides to tell her son about his family and their experiences of the war, signaling that Vianne is no longer hiding from the past.
