The Cloisters

“Despite the impracticality of it all, the overlooked edges of the Renaissance had grabbed me with their gilt and pageantry, their belief in magic, their performances of power. That my own world lacked those things made it an easy choice.”

This quote reveals Ann’s underlying, subconscious attraction to magic and the unknown. Hays lands on the word “choice,” which underscores two of the novel’s key themes, Fate Versus Free Will and Choice and Personal Responsibility. Later, Ann comes to believe that choice is only an illusion.

“I had never been to Europe, but I imagined it would look something like this: shady and cobbled and Gothic. The kind of place that reminded you how temporary the human body was, but how enduring stone.”

Ann’s observation of the setting heightens the gothic tone of the novel, as well as the atmosphere of otherness—a pocket of crumbling European grandeur in the midst of a modern American city. This moment foreshadows the deaths that occur later, and the way the Cloisters, and Ann by extension, survives.

“For years, I had lingered over the images, not just of paintings, but of archives—dimly lit rooms full of books and papers, the material history I was desperate to hold in my hands, see with my own eyes. And here was the Cloisters library in person […] it was a space, full of first editions and rare titles, that revered the dead as much as I did and in that, I felt like it was home.”

Although Ann is at odds with her wealthy, worldly colleagues, she fits naturally into the environment of the Cloisters. The Cloisters is personified and given the human quality of being able to revere. The intimacy Ann feels with her environment foreshadows how her ultimate loyalty is not to anyone she becomes close to on her journey, but to the Cloisters and what it represents. Hays’s language heightens the gothic atmosphere of the novel—it evokes a dark space that “revere[s] the dead.”

“The ancient Romans were so afraid of the power of fate that they worshiped the goddess Fortuna. Fortuna—fate, fortune—was the center of civic, private, and religious life. Pliny always said, ‘Fortune is the only God whom everyone invokes.’”

This quote juxtaposes academic scholarship against the unknown. Ann’s ultimate belief in fate evokes a similar religiosity that the Romans felt for Fortuna, goddess of fortune. Hays uses alliteration, where the same consonant sound is repeated, in this case the sound of F.

“The courts of the Renaissance loved magic and occult practices, and they were surprisingly adept at fitting them into their Christian worldview.”

This quote states how, during the Renaissance, Christian courts incorporated elements of the occult. This juxtaposition of seemingly irreconcilable ideals parallels Ann and Rachel’s own internal journeys. Like the Renaissance courts, Ann and Rachel become increasingly adept at justifying their own actions as they work toward their goals.

This quote suggests that people and societies see belief systems as malleable when it comes to personal gain. It also alludes to the conflict between freedom of Choice and Personal Responsibility to one’s own moral center.

“It’s an incredible place—the city, The Cloisters. Just don’t let it wear you down. Make it sharpen you instead.”

This quote, which appears early in the novel, foreshadows Ann’s inverted hero’s journey. At numerous points it would be easy for her to step away from events in favor of guarding her inner nature. Instead, she allows her environment to change her as she becomes something “sharper,” harder, and more calculating.

“‘The ouroboros, of course, a symbol of rebirth, death, and self-empowerment. The lion, a powerful card tempered by pip cards that remind us about balance and desire.’”

The lion card represents the character Leo, whose name means both lion and the constellation in the stars. The ouroboros is a symbol of continuation but also of self-destruction, as the symbol depicts a snake devouring itself. In this context, the ouroboros alludes to the continuing cycle of imbalanced corruption both Leo and Ann fall into, together and individually, as the novel progresses.

“I was drunk on the city itself, desperate, in some ways, to drown in it. To let the sounds and the people and the constant movement draw me into its tides and send me out to sea forever. I never felt as alive as I did when I was being tossed around by New York.”

The novel personifies New York City, giving it sentient qualities. This description of the city as a wild, impersonal, and unconquerable force parallels the power fate and destiny have in the novel. Ann’s desperation to immerse herself in the city indicates her desperation to also immerse herself in the legacy of academia. The juxtaposition of being sent “out to sea” and feeling “alive” create a contrast of life and death; this foreshadows Ann’s metaphorical internal death as she completes her inverted hero’s journey.

“Lingraf had been hired in the nineties from Princeton. I always imagined him as an anchor for the department, a hire that conferred the kind of stable, long-term legitimacy a liberal arts college in the wheat fields of eastern Washington so desperately needed.”

Ann’s memory of her professor alludes to the larger theme of gender bias, gatekeeping, and disparity within the world of academia. Lingraf became a figurehead for the college, an ornament rather than someone with truly groundbreaking ideas. Rachel and Ann face this disparity at their pivotal turning point; it is the core motivating factor for the choices that they make.

“It was tiny, this ring. Much too small to fit on any finger but my pinky, which it barely fit. On the interior the words loialte ne peur were engraved. Old French, probably from the thirteenth or fourteenth century, meaning loyalty without fear.”

Hays heightens suspense and tension between Ann and Rachel. The ring is constraining, suggesting a similar constraint between the two women; the engraving on the ring heightens this and implies that Ann experiences forced loyalty to Rachel. By the end of the story, Ann has embraced the concept of “loyalty without fear;” however, her loyalty ends up being to the Cloisters and her career.

“We walked back through the galleries, stopping in the early Gothic hall where the walls were lined with brilliant examples of stained glass from the cathedrals of Canterbury, Rouen, and Soissons. One showed a woman in a golden dress clutching two bottles; the title read: Woman Dispensing Poisons from the Legend of Saint Germain of Paris, 1245-47.”

The woman in stained glass foreshadows how Rachel will murder Patrick Roland with poison. The gold dress represents the woman’s ambition. The folkloric motif of a female poisoner symbolizes subtlety and subterfuge, and how women had to embrace discreet methods of ascending in society as Ann and Rachel do.

“[Rachel] seemed to move so seamlessly between the world of the cards and the world of rational research, but for me, I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep the boundaries clear.”

Ann’s observation marks the beginning of her shift away from Rachel. In particular, this quote illustrates Rachel’s ease with compartmentalization—a trait that gives her the ability to dispense of her enemies without fear. Ann’s increasing inability to separate the esoteric from the academic foreshadows her ultimate loss of self as these two worlds come together.

“I was scanning for one that was relatively normal when I saw them—a pair of dice. Not just any dice, but astragali like Patrick had in his library. I resisted the urge to palm them and ask Leo where they had come from, if they were replicas or the real thing, and returned with the pen.”

The astragali is one of Ann’s first signs that Leo is keeping secrets from her, and that he and Patrick are connected in unexpected ways. Dice are representative of fate and chance. The pair symbolizes Ann’s diverging path from Leo and the role fate will play in both their journeys.

“I needed to put some distance between Patrick and myself. If the card was a life raft, I knew there would not be room for all three of us.”

Ann uses a metaphor, where something is compared to something else without “like” or “as,” to describe the card, comparing it to a “life raft.” This metaphor describes her feelings of apprehension, and also ends up taking on a literal meaning. The uncovered tarot card does, in fact, end up being the thing that saves Ann’s career, and she learns that such a move doesn’t allow her, Patrick, and Rachel to move forward together. Ultimately, Ann is the only one who is carried by the card toward a brighter future.

“The woman doing the reading looked at her leaves and told her she wouldn’t give her the reading. That whatever was in there was too dark and sad. My mother always said she laughed it off, but I don’t think it ever left her, that fear.”

The novel explores Fate Versus Free Will. Rachel is adamant that everyone makes their own choices. This quote presents a self-fulfilling prophecy—that one’s life may become limited by their expectation of the future. Whether Rachel’s mother’s fate was truly revealed in the tea leaves is left open.

“The academic world, I knew, was small; full of friends and enemies, lightly smoldering conflicts that had been stoked by years of offhand remarks about one’s work, and sometimes, one’s character.”

Hays heightens tension in the scene, and highlights Ann’s gradual shift in character. Prior to her arrival in New York, Ann had been at the periphery of academic conflicts; now she is at the center of them. This represents a turning point in her journey as she becomes more entrenched in opportunism and self-preservation.

“But rather than being terrifying, there was something about it that felt delicious, as if I were finally becoming one with the building. As if we were always meant to be crushed beneath the power of the work itself.”

This moment mirrors an earlier one in which Ann reflects on the way the Cloisters feels like home. Here, the Cloisters becomes the predominant force in Ann’s life. By the end of the novel, Ann does become “crushed” under its influence and her ambition, leading to the end of one state of being and the beginning of another.

“My firing, my father’s death—the way we all lived, one a knife’s edge, so easily pushed by fortune onto one side or the other, success or failure, life or death. These were the caprices that the ancient Romans tried to rationalize with their philosophies and gods, but deep down, they knew the truth: fate was as brutal as it was providential.”

At this point, the novel has not revealed the true nature of Ann’s father’s death. Ann discards the enormity of the experience. She suggests that fate rather than human choice are to blame for tragedy, showing how far she has deviated from taking responsibility for her choices and actions.

“I hadn’t expected to fall in love with New York, but falling in love can make a city burn brighter. I sometimes wondered if I took Leo outside of the five boroughs if he would have the same luster, if the city itself would, from a distance. But I loved the bigness and the smallness of it, the weirdness and the joy.”

Distance, both emotional and geographic, is a common thread throughout the novel. This quote suggests that a lack of emotional distance skews reality. The same can be said of Ann’s relationship with academia, with the tarot cards, and her own actions at the end of the novel. Her observation of love and light appears healthy, but contains within it a more sinister connotation of emotional obliviousness.

“What bad luck, I thought. No, I knew now it was something else. It was fate. The way Leo had encouraged me to take what I wanted suddenly took on a darker resonance.”

This moment foreshadows Ann’s ultimate descent as her personal morals erode. While she initially feels her ethics are superior to Leo’s, the choices she makes are much more malevolent and permanent. Here, she shows her increasing belief in fate and refusal to acknowledge choice.

“We were survivors. Climbing out of the dusty places from which we had begun, destined for bigger things. In deciding to protect myself and Rachel, that’s all I had done. Made sure that I would be able to keep climbing.”

The key word here is “deciding”—Ann acknowledges her choice to tell Detective Murphy about Leo’s thefts, even as she begins to reject responsibility for it. She justifies her betrayal by comparing it to the choices Leo had been making, and to her place in the city amongst people who make similar choices every day. This moment marks a turning point as she comes to recognize, and ultimately accept, the journey she is making.

“Opportunity. That’s what the article would give me—the chance to say yes or no, the chance to live in New York, the chance, almost, to rewrite the past.”

The word “chance” appears three times in a row. Here, chance means opportunity or new direction, but it also refers to destiny and fortune. In using the double meaning of the word, Hays underlines the relationship between fate and creating opportunities of one’s own.

“Rachel and Leo had shown me a different way of living, and for that, I had fallen in love with both of them. Standing at the edge of the window, looking across the lake, I was caught between the desire to destroy it all and hold onto it forever. The impulses were, I thought, the same.”

Rachel and Leo are foils of each other, and each helps to shape Ann’s journey in different ways. In this moment, Ann transcends both of their influence to become something new. The counterintuitive idea that preservation and destruction are the same impulse represents Ann’s current state within the Cloisters; in order to preserve her precarious position and place within the academic community, she needs to destroy the relationships and life she has built.