81 pages • 2 hours read
Jenny HanThe Summer I Turned Pretty
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Belonging and Fitting In
Belonging and fitting in is an important motif throughout the text that illustrates Belly’s feelings of insecurity and how it has shaped her self-perception. Belly has always struggled with feelings of being left out or like she does not quite belong within Steven, Jeremiah, and Conrad’s group: “It was the feeling different, like an outsider, that I hated. [...] I wanted to be just like them” (26). Being both the youngest and the only girl, Belly’s sense of not fitting in lingers. Even as Belly matures, she finds that her maturation causes greater distance between her and the boys as they try to navigate their feelings for each other.
Belly often finds herself drawing comparisons to others and coming up short. When she brings her friend, Taylor, to Cousins Beach one summer, she rationalizes her choice by explaining: “I thought that by bringing her I’d be proving that I was a pretty one too. See? See, I’m like her; we are the same. But we weren’t, and everybody knew it” (67). Bringing Taylor only amplifies Belly’s feelings of insecurity and sense of not fitting in because Belly does not see herself as “pretty” like Taylor. Her feelings of jealousy even cause her to lash out at Taylor after Belly discovers Taylor and Steven kissing: ‘“I didn’t think you’d ever act so—so…’ [...] ‘Slutty’” (186). Belly admits that even though she reacts this way, her true feelings are that “it was all such BS. I would’ve traded my spot for hers in a second” (186). Even angry, Belly’s true feelings are that she wants to belong and fit in. Belly promotes her “supposed innocence” (186) to elevate herself above Taylor, but in her heart, she would give anything to be in Taylor’s position.
These feelings that she somehow does not belong last even through the present summer in which Belly does feel pretty. When Cam tells her that when he first saw her he thought she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen, Belly does not believe him: “I just didn’t see how it could be true. It was almost mean of him to lie about it. I knew what I looked like back then, and I wasn’t the prettiest girl anybody had ever seen” (158). This quote illustrates how Belly’s insecurities from childhood linger well into the present and continue to affect how she views herself and how she receives compliments from others.
Summer
Summer represents potential, opportunity, and change within the text. Many of the most important moments in Belly’s life have happened during the summer, specifically at the Fishers’ beach house at Cousins Beach. She states: “Summer was what mattered. My whole life was measured in summers. Like I don’t really begin living until June, until I’m at that beach, in that house” (5). For Belly, summer is almost like when her “real” life begins, and everything outside of the summer is just a placeholder.
This is partly why the events of each summer carry so much weight for Belly, especially as she grows older. This summer, Belly feels strongly that she needs to “make the most of this summer, really make it count, in case there wasn’t another one quite like it” (98). When Belly finally decides to confess her feelings to Conrad, she does so in part because she cannot carry the weight of it throughout the rest of the year: “All I knew was that the summer was almost over. Soon it would be too late. We would drive away, and I would never have told him” (242). Her love for Conrad is one thing from the summer that affects her life during the rest of the year. She recognizes that after this summer, things will change, regardless of whether or not she tells Conrad her feelings. But if she does, there is the potential that he may reciprocate, and therefore Belly could carry a part of her summers with her all year long.
The end of the text suggests that this may be the case, and Belly finds herself in Conrad’s car during the dead of winter, poised to go somewhere with him that only they know. By ending the text in winter with Conrad, Belly illustrates that she has successfully integrated her favorite part of summer into the rest of her life away from Cousins Beach. The final lines, “Everything that happened this past summer, and every summer before it, has all led up to this. To now” (276), indicate that the rest of her life now carries the same potential as her magical summers always have.
The Ocean
Water is often associated with rites of passage, baptism, and crossing over into a new phase or form. The ocean in The Summer I Turned Pretty follows this same pattern. The ocean is not only an important setting in the text but a representation of Belly’s desire to grow up. One evening on a walk with Cam, Belly suddenly gets an urge: “I wanted to go skinny-dipping. With Cam. That was what older kids did at the beach, just like hooking up at the drive-in. If we went skinny-dipping, it would be like proof. That I had grown up” (201). Belly views skinny-dipping in the ocean, partaking in an activity that she knows other “older kids” do, as an important rite of passage that will solidify her place in the ranks of the older, mature kids.
However, her reaction when Cam declines indicates that Belly still has some growing up to do before she makes that passage: “I walked away as fast as I could, and sand kicked up behind me” (203). Interestingly, part of Belly is also relieved not to have to jump in: “Part of me was mad, and part of me was relieved” (202), showing that while Belly wants to be seen as mature and one of the older kids, part of her still feels unready or unwilling to take that necessary leap into the symbolic waters of adulthood.
Belly also often expresses her feelings for Conrad with language related to the ocean and the tides. When she confesses her love for him, she recalls a memory “My whole life, it’s always been you. [...] [Y]ou came out and got me the time I swam out too far. [...] You stayed with me and you pushed me back to shore” (243). One of the pivotal moments in the development of Belly’s love for Conrad comes when he saves her from the ocean and brings her back to dry land. She also describes her feelings for Conrad in terms of the tides: “I kept getting caught in this current—first love, I mean. First love kept making me come back to this, to him. [...] It didn’t matter what he said or did, I’d never let him go” (262). Here, Belly admits that her love for Conrad feels like a physical sensation or pull, a current that she is caught in and is helpless to release herself from.
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By Jenny Han
