The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“‘The answer I have, the only one I have,’ he said, ‘is that you are dying because you are dying. Not because of God’s deciding to punish you and not because He is neglecting you, but simply because you are. It is a part of your story as much as you are.’”

Lenni deeply values honesty and trust, so Arthur’s sincere answer to her difficult question lays the foundation for a strong friendship between the characters. Arthur’s view that death is an essential “part of [her] story” connects to the novel’s theme of stories and helps make death less frightening.

“It was comforting to know that someone else was in trouble too. [...] And that’s exactly how I felt when Margot chose to break the silence by leaning toward me and whispering, ‘I’m dying too.’”

Lenni finds a kindred spirit in Margot. Their mutual experience of living with a terminal illness makes Lenni and Margot’s relationship even stronger than Lenni’s connection to Father Arthur because the two patients share a distinct reality that others can’t understand without living it themselves.

“Numbers don’t mean a lot to me. [....] I prefer words. Delicious, glorious words. But there were two numbers in front of me that mattered, and would matter for the rest of my numbered days. ‘Between us,’ I said quietly, ‘we’re a hundred years old.’”

Lenni associates the number 100 with completeness and a long, fulfilling life. Although she and Margot both have terminal conditions and may not see another year, their combined age allows them to jointly claim the achievement of living for a century. Shortly after this scene, Lenni suggests that she and Margot create 100 paintings to celebrate their 100 years of life. Lenni’s love of “[d]elicious, glorious words” connects to one of the novel’s main themes—The Importance of Sharing Stories—and anticipates the way that the friends share their memories as they create their paintings.

“Once I was old enough to understand it, the Swedish birthday song always made me sad. I didn’t know anybody who had lived to one hundred, and I didn’t think I would live to one hundred either. So, every year when my parents and friends sang to me, I felt this sadness that they were all celebrating something that wouldn’t actually happen. They were hoping for the impossible. I would let them down. In the video, having just blown out my first birthday candle and been fed some icing on a spoon by my father, I have no idea what the song means and I look so happy.”

Lenni’s first birthday is the first story that she shares with Margot. Lenni’s fascination with the number 100 began with the Swedish birthday song, which expresses the hope that the birthday person will live for a century. Although the art teacher asked her students to paint a happy memory, Lenni’s story is tied to sadness, mortality, and a fear of disappointing others. Even before she received a terminal diagnosis, seeing her friends and family celebrating her birthday reminded Lenni of death. By combining her age with Margot’s, Lenni can claim a century of life for herself and thus find a solution to the sadness she has carried ever since she became aware of mortality.

“It isn’t enough to have been a particle in the great extant of existence. I want, we want, more. We want for people to know us, to know our story, to know who we are and who we will be. And after we’ve gone, to know who we were.”

Lenni makes a connection between her desire to achieve a form of permanence, a desire that inspired her to create the 100 paintings with Margot, and the universal desire to be more than “a particle in the great extant of existence.” The paintings allow her to leave behind proof of her life and depictions of her memories, thus forging a link between The Importance of Sharing Stories and the deep human wish to conquer mortality.

“‘Anyway, perhaps in the heat of the moment it might seem that revenge is the only thing you can do to satisfy your anger, but you might find that after time has passed, forgiveness is what has done you the most good, is what you are most proud of.’ ‘But,’ I said slowly, ‘I might not have those months or years to look back on my actions. I might never see the day when I am proud of my forgiveness. I’m only living in the short term, so shouldn’t I just get my fun wherever I can?’”

Forgiveness is an element of one of the novel’s major themes and the subject of one of Father Arthur and Lenni’s many conversations about life and religion. Lenni’s suggestion that sometimes fun and revenge can be the same thing suits her mischievous nature. However, her playful words hint at deeply rooted pain and anger. Eventually, Lenni manages to forgive her mother.

“Johnny was both a window and a mirror to me. Sometimes, I felt I could see right through him, and other times, when I looked for Johnny, or at Johnny, all I could really see was a reflection of myself.”

Margot uses the metaphors of windows and mirrors to explain why her marriage with Johnny is faring badly. The chapter’s title also contains a metaphor: Winter is often used to represent endings in literature, and “The First Winter” thus signifies the beginning of the end of their marriage.

“We named him David George, the first name for Johnny’s father and the second for the king, who had died the year before. Good role models, we thought then. I have had many years to think about it, and I wonder if the name had too much turmoil in it—both men dead, both so strongly connected to the war.”

Margot’s explanation of the name she and Johnny gave their son contains ominous diction. She worries that her son inherits not only the late king and her deceased father-in-law’s names but also the “turmoil,” death, and “war” that afflicted the men’s lives. This foreshadows Davey’s early death.

“The beach was deserted. And beyond the sand, the long grass was fighting against the strong wind. We stood silently for a while, watching the violent waves sweeping sand into the sea.”

In this scene, Johnny tells Margot that he’s leaving her, and the narrative subtly reveals that Davey died. Writers often use settings to reflect characters’ emotions. The desolate weather and the deserted beach mirror Margot’s despair and abandonment in this passage.

“I don’t know how to say goodbye to a child. I didn’t then and I don’t now. So instead I talked to him. I told him of the life he would lead, of the school uniform he would wear, of his days in the summer sunshine when I would take him to the park. I told him how he would get a part-time job in a greengrocer’s and eventually buy the place and run it himself.”

This scene develops the thematic material around The Importance of Sharing Stories and shows how doing so offers a way to express love and defy death. Margot’s observation that she still doesn’t know “how to say goodbye to a child” foreshadows Lenni’s death in Chapter 71. Margot invents a simple, beautiful life for Lenni through storytelling just as she does for Davey in Chapter 27.

“The pictures we painted that day were secondary. The stories we told were secondary too. Nothing really mattered except that I was in the Rose Room and Margot was beside me.”

Part 1 ends with Lenni having a medical emergency and undergoing surgery. Chapter 31 presents the friends’ reunion in the Rose Room afterward. The Importance of Sharing Stories and The Power of Friendship are both major themes in the novel, but Lenni’s narration in this passage makes it clear that she values the latter far more.

“‘Lenni,” she said softly, ‘you’re the bravest person I know.’ ‘Why?’ ‘You just are,’ she said, and the moment fell between us. ‘Dying isn’t brave,’ I said, ‘it’s accidental. I’m not brave, I’m just not dead yet.’”

Lenni’s refutation of New Nurse’s characterization of her as “the bravest person” she knows shows that Lenni wants to be remembered for who she is, not put on a pedestal. In part, her denial that she’s brave stems from her great fear of death at this point in the novel.

“I’d lived with the girl for five years and had never known her name. I wasn’t the only person reinventing myself in London. In fact, the person I most wanted to be was an invention herself.”

This chapter marks an important development in Margot and Meena’s relationship and in Margot’s understanding of love and identity. The revelation that Meena chose her own name makes Margot realize that the person she loves and longs to be is “an invention herself.” This makes Meena much more relatable and attainable to Margot, and they share their first kiss later in this scene. After the kiss, a stranger calls them an anti-gay slur, referencing the societal pressures that keep the women apart for decades even after they become aware of their mutual love.

“We have died each night. Or at least, we have laid down to die, and let go of everything in this world, hoping for dreams and morning.”

Many writers, including Shakespeare, have compared death to sleep. Cronin’s work brings a distinctive perspective to this age-old comparison because her narrator is a young woman with a terminal diagnosis. As a result, the hope for “dreams and morning” becomes not only a common human experience but also an expression of Lenni’s deep desire to go on living.

“If the mind is so powerful that it can kill a man with no illness and save a man who’s dying, I would never want to give my brain the opportunity to kill me by not believing that I might get better.”

After New Nurse brings Lenni a wheelchair, Lenni fears that everyone has lost hope in the possibility that she’ll recover. She recalls hearing about a man with a terminal diagnosis who made a full recovery when he was mistakenly told that he was healthy. This tale connects to the theme of The Importance of Sharing Stories because, like that man, Lenni wants to continue telling herself the story that she’ll recover in the hope that her belief might keep her alive.

“In the same way you know when you have hunger and thirst, you will know when it is time.”

Mr. Eklund tells Lenni that she’ll know when it’s her time to die. Although Lenni is still deeply afraid of death when she meets Mr. Eklund, remembering his words comforts her later when her end nears.

“I wanted to ask her why she could be so free in so many ways but one. Tell her that she needn’t be afraid of me. Explain that I felt for her in a way that I never felt for Johnny, because the way I felt for her wasn’t born of obligation. It was completely and wholly voluntary. And that I could love her forever, if only she would let me. But no words came out.”

Margot knows that even though she “could love her forever,” she can’t make Meena stop hiding her own feelings. Margot is physically bloody and bruised in this scene because she followed Meena to a protest against the Vietnam War, but Meena doesn’t have a scratch on her. This mirrors how Margot’s love for Meena tears her up inside, but Meena appears unscathed.

“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

These words are the final stanza of Sarah Williams’s poem “The Old Astronomer to His Pupil.” Humphrey includes the poem in the letter he gives Margot after their first meeting. The poem applies to Margot and Lenni too. Throughout the novel, stars symbolize finding joy amid difficulty. The two patients merrily embrace life while experiencing terminal illnesses. By the end of the novel, neither Lenni nor Margot is “fearful of the night” of death.

“For what felt like just long enough to make it real, I had the thought that I could take her hand and we could run—go to a life somewhere far away where she could be mine.”

Different chapters and characters in the story of Margot’s life collide as Meena appears on Margot’s second wedding day. Even though many years have passed since they’ve seen one another, Margot still longs to run away with her. Her passionate feelings for Meena lead Margot to take Humphrey’s calmer, cozier love for granted, which she regrets after his death.

“Having worked at this hospital for many years, I have often pondered whether I have made any difference to the hospital, and in the end, all I can really know for certain is that the hospital has made a difference to me. I count myself blessed to have spent my days here, worked here, and prayed here. And I will be forever changed by the people I have met and their bravery, their courage, and their light.”

Father Arthur’s sermon during his final service at the chapel is also his farewell speech to the hospital and, in particular, to Lenni. He visits her after his retirement, but the sermon gives him an opportunity to thank her for sharing her “bravery,” “courage,” and “light” with him without receiving her usual deflecting jokes and chaotic questions in response.

“‘Do you know,’ she said slowly, ‘that the stars that we see the clearest are already dead?’”

Margot’s explanation that “the stars that we see the clearest are already dead” develops the novel’s use of stars as a symbol. The dead stars live on in the light they provide, and this gives Lenni hope that she can likewise achieve the permanence she longs for.

“So we ate cake and talked and laughed, and together Margot and I celebrated our one hundred years on the earth.”

In the novel’s climax, Margot and Lenni celebrate reaching their goal of creating 100 paintings with a 100th birthday party, fulfilling the number’s symbolism. Lenni holds on until she and Margot achieve their goal of creating 100 paintings, and she dies the next day at peace and surrounded by loving friends.

“Lenni, wherever you are. Whatever wonderful world you find yourself in now. Wherever that fiery heart is, that quick wit, that disabling charm. Know that I love you. For the brief lifetime that we knew each other, I loved you like you were my very own daughter.”

Margot’s goodbye letter to Lenni connects two of the novel’s themes—The Power of Friendship and The Importance of Sharing Stories—because Margot cherishes how sharing memories with Lenni changed her. Lenni helped Margot recover the letter containing Meena’s marriage proposal, and Margot is certain that her friend is waiting for her in a “wonderful world.” Margot can now view her approaching surgery without fear, knowing that life and death are both great adventures.