Sparks Like Stars: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 10

Part 1, Chapters 11-21

Part 1, Chapters 22-32

Part 2, Chapters 33-49

Part 2, Chapter 50-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Ring

The ring that is excavated from Ai-Khanoum and brought to Kabul is a powerful symbol that develops new layers of significance throughout the novel. Sitara describes it as “a gold ring with inset teardrops of turquoise and garnet” (24), the stones nearly the size of her fingernail. At first sight, it is merely a treasure to marvel at. The fact that it is an artifact of the Greek-Bactrian civilization that thrived during the Hellenic period, however, makes it a powerful representation of the long history, beauty, and richness of Afghanistan. As that Afghanistan is destroyed before her eyes, Sitara takes the ring with her, a symbol of a lost, ancient world that now serves as a symbol of the world Sitara has lost. She protects the ring as her talisman, “a key to my survival” (90).

The ring becomes Aryana’s connection to her parents and homeland. She hides the ring from Janet and Everett, her foster parents, the way the real Sitara is hidden from them, something precious they could never understand and might destroy in their ignorance. During her life in New York, Aryana keeps the ring buried in her jewelry box, symbolic of her buried past. However, the ring also becomes her link back to Afghanistan and her reason for making a return. When she restores the ring to the museum in Kabul, Aryana thinks “of the way I’d clung to the ring, like a drowning girl holding on to a life preserver, and how we’d floated out of the castle together” (426). In telling her story, Aryana is able to inform other people of a historical event that is little known outside of Afghanistan. By returning the ring, she symbolically restores a treasured piece of history to her country and repairs something that was broken inside of her the night she lost her parents.

Oklahoma

Both the state and the 1943 musical Oklahoma! by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein represent, to Sitara, a distant, foreign place, as strange and remote to her as Afghanistan would seem to most in the US. Her parents describe the land as “so flat that they thought the sun could take a seat on the horizon” (16). Oklahoma becomes Aryana’s link to the US in two respects. First, the birth certificate of her sister, who was born there, gives Sitara status as a US citizen. Second, Tilly’s part in a performance of Oklahoma! at the embassy offers Sitara a cover for revisiting her family home and retrieving the documents she needs. Tilly’s acting is what helps Sitara travel from Afghanistan to Pakistan and then on to the US. Later, in the second half of the novel, seeing a production of Oklahoma! offers a nostalgic moment for Antonia and Aryana, a memory of their time in Kabul that foreshadows their return. At the same time, the play provides a commentary on racial stereotypes that Americans hold. Aryana notices the clichés in the portrayal of the “Persian” character, the peddler Ali Hakim just before she discovers that her boyfriend, Adam, is using her ethnicity as leverage in his political campaign. The juxtaposition of events illustrates the ways cultural racism such as that found in Oklahoma! results in racist beliefs and actions that harm real people. Oklahoma thus embodies the far different culture and geography of the US as compared to Afghanistan, as well as the racism and xenophobia endemic to American culture.

Anastasia Romanov

In 1918, as part of the Bolshevik Revolution that overthrew Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, all the members of the Romanov family, including the tsar’s children, were executed by firing squad. Rumors grew that the youngest daughter, 17-year-old Anastasia, had somehow survived, and over the years various women came forward claiming to be the grand duchess. Aryana follows this story closely because it speaks to her of her own experiences of revolution, exile, and loss of family and identity. The exiled Anastasia would, like Aryana, have witnessed the execution of her family and a symbolic end to her life.

Aryana is fascinated by the stories of people impersonating the grand duchess because she began her life in America feeling she was impersonating her sister. In 1991, when the bodies of others in the Romanov family were found, the bones of Anastasia were not with them. Aryana finds this symbolic of her separation from her family. In 2007, a year before the second part of the novel opens, Anastasia’s remains were identified. This gave a kind of closure to Anastasia’s story that Aryana found upsetting because she had no such closure for her own; the story no longer holds the same resonance for her. Her fascination with the grand duchess’s story becomes a way for Aryana can address her feelings of loss, grief, and guilt without having to confront her own circumstances.