Cassandra in Reverse

Cassie’s experience of synesthesia means that she experiences as emotions as colors. Smale subverts the use of synesthesia as a literary device, since in Cassandra in Reverse, the idea of emotion as color is not metaphorical, but crucial to Cassie’s way of understanding the world. Because processing emotion as color is part of Cassie’s actual experience, it is not symbolic. Rather, in terms of narrative effect, color-emotion functions as a motif throughout the work, and allows Smale to create a vivid representation of how Cassie sees the world around her.

For example, observing Will before their breakup, Cassie notes that “[a]ll the way home something lime-colored is arching out of him, and I know most people think green is jealousy, but it’s not: not this time, anyway. It feels like a decision is being made” (45). Cassie’s experience of emotions is not consistent, and the same emotion can be multiple different colors, depending on the person or situation. This variability contributes to the vividness of Cassie’s experience, as does the fact that colors are also combined with tactile and kinesthetic images: “twisting like kaleidoscopes, like prisms, like spinning bird feathers lit with their own iridescence” (261). Again, the color-emotion motif serves to provide sensory detail about Cassie’s neurodiverse experience of the world.

Important to Cassie because it was her mother’s field of study, and because it’s her primary way of understanding the world around her, Greek mythology functions as an important symbol throughout Cassandra in Reverse. As well as symbolizing Cassie’s understanding of herself, including her ability to time travel, it is often the lens through which she relates to the world around her. The fact that Cassie achieves understanding of the present moment via references to antiquity is ironic, but particularly fitting given the time-travel component of the novel.

Greek mythology is associated closely with Cassie’s identity, as she associates herself with both her namesakes throughout the novel: Cassandra, the seer who wasn’t believed, and Penelope, who wove and unwove her famous tapestry. She suggests that her name makes her sound “like a cross between a Greek heroine and a killer’s basement” (19), and she also refers to the idea of names with regard to her sister, Artemis Helen Dankworth: “Somehow I got a murdered prophetic priestess and an abandoned wife with a passion for embroidery [...] and my sister got two of the most beautiful and powerful women in Greek mythology” (277). Contrary to these two negative ideas of nominative determinism, Cassie’s eventual assertion that she is done making herself smaller and that she has had power over her future the entire time is paired with thoughts about her name.

Throughout the novel, Cassie compares most significant situations to Greek mythology, noting, “It’s how I make sense of the world and everything in it. It’s what grounds me, makes me feel solid, gives me something constant to return to” (348). Because Greek mythology is so important to Cassie, it is extremely prevalent throughout the novel, often with contemporary resonances. Cassie describes the Titan Eos as the “Bridget Jones of Greek mythology” (93), and Zeus as “king god and original fuckboy” (141). In this sense, Smale’s use of Greek mythology throughout Cassandra in Reverse symbolizes the idea that past and future aren’t actually that far apart.