Ashes by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Moira Griffin                                                                                                                    808

Many writers use symbolism to appeal to the reader’s emotions and to clarify the meaning in the story. The story is about a teenage girl named Ashleigh (nicknamed Ashes for short) who has divorced parents, with her mom as a on top of it parent and her dad as a lazy, not really caring parent, she still seems to think very fondly of her dad in the beginning, thinking he’s the best parent. As the story goes on her opinion on him seems to shift. As we follow ashes though the story, the author uses symbolism to keep the reader understanding whom she is and ultimately, to guess who she will decide to be

            Throughout the story, the weather mirrors ashes relationship with her father. An example of this would be “That winter, it felt like every time I saw my father, the sun cast off just a little more warmth than it had the day before. I don’t remember a gray day when I saw him.” Ashleigh says this line on the first page, showing that her father makes her very happy and she looks forward to seeing him. On the last page Pfeffer writes, “ I looked out the window and saw only ash gray sky.” The quote here is showing that her opinion on here dad changed out through the story. This is presented by the change of weather, which was from always sunny and warm days to gloomy and gray days. This shows that Susan used weather to compare to the dads relationship with the Ashes.

In the story, the necklace is symbolized with the dad and how he can never keep a promise. The reference by Ashleigh “ when I was little, dad used to promise me the stars for a necklace, but like most promises, that one never quite happened.” This symbol stands for how her dad always made promises he could not keep. It also displayed the little bit of distrust that she felt in her dad because he could never keep to anything he would say.

During the story the teapot, symbolized the dream life the she will never get. The quote that Ashleigh says is “ it was shaped like a little house with a curtained window and a flowerpot on the windowsill. It was the sort of house I would never live in.” The quote symbolizes here dream that she knew she couldn’t get. The quote also demonstrates that Ashleigh’s dreams of living in her dream house are crushed by reality.

            Symbolism helps tell the story by showing the growth of Ashleigh. This story has a lot of symbols to show how Ashleigh, the main character, deals with her issues of the father. In the end we are able to see the character growth that Ashleigh has gone through. The author shows us the change of character by using symbols instead of words.