51 pages • 1 hour read
Ashley PostonThe Dead Romantics
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A 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
Crows
Crows symbolize Florence’s ability to see and interact with the spirit world, and their appearance signals that a ghost is nearby. A group of crows is called a murder, vocabulary that reflects the novel’s attitude toward death, a blend of the morbid and the satirical. The crows like to perch on the dead oak tree outside the Days Gone Funeral Parlor; they follow her around Mairmont in Ben’s wake, a grim entourage.
The crows are a sign of life amid the presence of the dead, akin to how Florence is able to see both ghosts and the living. The crows’ role in the novel is reminiscent of their function in ancient mythology as messengers, premonitions, or guardians of the underworld. Florence’s dad asks for a murder of crows at his funeral, perhaps because he had the same familiarity with them, and while the family has no luck catching the crows, they come to the cemetery in Ben’s wake. They make Ben part of the family and give him a part in fulfilling Florence’s promise to meet her father’s last requests.
The Wind
The appearance of wind symbolizes the ability to cross over or communicate between the spirit and living worlds. Florence’s father tells her he can hear the dead singing in the wind (62), and Florence thinks of that whenever she hears the wind. Xavier’s mother told him the wind is “the breath of everyone who came before us” (63). This exemplifies the connection between the living and ghost world which Xavier and Florence can perceive; the wind serves to remind Florence that the dead are never really gone but can still be present in memory and even spirit.
Lee cheapens this idea, belittling Florence’s gift by using her childhood and the stories she tells him for his novel. However, Ben restores Florence’s trust in her own perceptions when she experiences wind with him. She feels a cold wind when she gets the news that her father died. Later, on the Ridge with Ben, a wind blows him away as well as the dandelion wishes, foreshadowing their inability to be together as human and ghost companions. In the Epilogue, the wind is a reminder that all is as Florence remembers, and all is as it should be. Like death, it’s a natural force she doesn’t understand, can’t control, but simply accepts.
The Romance Novel
The Dead Romantics is a book that is consciously about stories and writing. Being set in the literary world, it is rife with allusions to contemporary authors, from Stephen King and Nora Roberts to Stephenie Meyer and Sarah MacLean. Poston even works in a reference to Howl’s Moving Castle (1986) by Diana Wynne Jones, a book she lists in the Reader’s Guide as one of her comfort reads. There is passing reference to the Romantic poets alluded to in the title, including Lord Byron and Percy and Mary Shelley.
The romance novel itself, as a novel with a particular structure, symbolizes Florence’s career as well as the framework by which she tries to make sense of her life. She sees herself as fluent in the patterns of romance, “the meet-cutes and the swoony moments” (18), the reconciliation scene after a breakup or misunderstanding, the happy ending. The romance novel provides a template that, after breaking up with Lee, Florence believes she will never achieve in her life; she believes she conforms to the rule that most people don’t find true love. Allusions to romance novel tropes add an element of metafiction, as Poston’s novel is a romance; it is about a romance author; and Florence thinks of her own feelings in terms of the romance arc throughout.
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By Ashley Poston
