59 pages • 1 hour read
Tillie ColeA Thousand Broken Pieces
Fiction | Novel | YA | 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
Stars/Northern Lights
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness, death, and death by suicide.
In A Thousand Boy Kisses, Poppy draws comfort from her strong belief in the Christian conception of heaven, God, and the afterlife. Savannah, though, never fully believes in Poppy’s religious interpretation of death, and she explicitly doubts this version of the afterlife in the sequel. However, Savannah finds a substitute for Poppy’s idea of heaven in the idea of “energy,” specifically as it manifests in the stars and the northern lights. Savannah frequently describes Poppy either as a star, as living among the stars, or as having dispersed, as energy, into the cosmos. In particular, the pink ribbon of light that she sees amid the northern lights becomes a physical manifestation of Poppy’s afterlife, providing comfort and support to Savannah as she struggles to understand her place in the world without Poppy.
The significance of the stars and the northern lights as symbols, though, is not just that they represent Poppy. In the Epilogue, Savannah says that all her lost loved ones, including Cillian, are among the stars. As such, stars symbolize a broader faith in some form of afterlife. In the context of Poppy’s distinctly Christian idea of the afterlife, the stars provide an alternative for readers and characters who might not agree with her perspective. By affirming that some things are too vast or complex to understand through science, Savannah is allowing herself to engage with Poppy’s belief in heaven without compromising her own skepticism regarding Christianity. In a similar vein, the novel uses the group’s travels to provide different religious perspectives on death, including Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, showing how different cultures and people interpret Savannah’s idea of something beyond comprehension.
Poppy’s Journal and Cillian’s Ticket
Though Poppy and Cillian are not alive during the events of the novel, they still receive characterization through memories and artifacts. Specifically, both Savannah and Cael possess written artifacts from their deceased loved ones. For Savannah, Poppy’s journal is initially a source of anxiety because reading it feels like closing her connection to her sister. However, the journal itself is full of advice, words of affirmation, and love, and Savannah ultimately uses the journal as a way to regain her connection to Poppy. Poppy’s journal is thus a symbol of Poppy and Savannah’s relationship, especially the love and happiness they shared while Poppy was alive. That Savannah finishes reading it by the end of the novel acts as a farewell between the sisters, though not one that precludes Savannah from feeling Poppy’s presence throughout the rest of her life. Essentially, when Savannah finishes the journal, her relationship with Poppy resolves in the closure that Savannah desperately needed.
For Cael, too, Cillian’s ticket represents their relationship, but this symbol of their bond is tainted by Cael’s misconceptions about depression. When Cael reveals the words on the ticket, he notes that he wanted to believe that Cillian’s death was an accident but that the ticket confirmed his darkest suspicions. Rather than achieving the closure that Savannah finds in finishing the journal, Cael therefore rips up the ticket before leaving Japan, symbolically severing himself from his relationship with Cillian. However, after therapy, Cael sees the other ticket in Cillian’s room and regrets tearing up his own; having come to terms with Cillian’s death, he no longer wants to forget about Cillian. Fortunately, Savannah repairs the other ticket, allowing Cael to reclaim his relationship with Cillian.
Cael’s Tattoos
Cael’s tattoos symbolize his guilt and self-hatred. As he explicitly notes, he got the tattoos in an effort to erase “any sign of the person [he] was before” Cillian’s death (19), his reasoning being that cutting himself off from the life he had with Cillian would make him feel better. However, the root of this self-effacement is self-loathing; Cael’s decision to cover himself in tattoos stems from the guilt he feels for his perceived failure to help his brother through depression.
