93 pages • 3 hours read
Joyce Carol OatesBig Mouth & Ugly Girl
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2002A 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
Rocky River Nature Preserve
The Rocky River Nature Preserve is Ursula’s “favorite place” (12) and the site of Matt’s frequent hiking trips following his accusation. A place of solitude, the Nature Preserve’s wintry trails allow Matt a reprieve from the negativity of his social and familial surroundings. With their icy white landscapes, they also symbolize Matt’s desire to erase his troubles like he erases emails he does not want to send: “All these things Matt meant to erase just by hiking in the preserve on this windy blue day” (145). This erasure takes a darker turn when the nature preserve serves as the site of Matt’s attempted suicide (an erasure of his very self), but the site is also redeemed by Ursula’s strange sense of being drawn there to rescue Matt (143). In the final chapter Matt and Ursula share their first kiss in the preserve.
Emails are a consistent motif throughout Big Mouth & Ugly Girl. They primarily serve as Matt and Ursula’s most common mode of communication outside of school. They are how Ursula first contacts Matt when she offers to serve as a witness on his behalf, and the use of this medium sets her apart from Matt’s other friends; Matt emails his friends for their support but receives no reply. The way Matt and Ursula use email is indicative of their personalities. Matt writes long emails in which he confesses his feelings but then often deletes them, using these messages to Ursula as a sort of diary that signals his budding identity as a writer (and romantic interest in Ursula). Ursula, more to the point, uses terse replies but privately thinks over everything she reads from Matt.
Newspapers and News Stories
News reports, newspapers, and headlines are a background to much of the activity in Rocky River between January and March. In some ways newspapers serve as an officialization of gossip: Though Ursula first hears of Matt’s interrogation by police at school, she confirms the story when she sees a news report on the bomb threat at home. This is also how her mother learns of the story, bringing the stakes of the accusation to a new level. Additionally, it is newspapers that officially announce Matt’s involvement in the bomb threat and his parents’ lawsuit against the school. Finally, the newspaper is the medium by which the Donaghys receive their mail threats (Chapter 18). These threats are scrawled over articles about the bomb threat and the suit against the school district.
Matt also writes for the school newspaper, a facet of his character that indicates his interest in writing. His resignation from the paper’s staff is one of the early stages of his decline into depression, and his reinstatement at the school paper and his published op-ed in the New York Times represent his renewed interest in his passions and his corrected life trajectory.
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By Joyce Carol Oates
