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55 pages 1 hour read

Penelope Lively

Moon Tiger

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1987

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Symbols & Motifs

Moon Tiger

The Moon Tiger insecticide incense, as it burns, is a symbol that represents the passage of time and, in conjunction, the nature of memory. Its burning hints at the preciousness of fleeting moments. Its spiral suggests how the mind circles those moments in striving to recall them, never quite able to return to that same place. “A green coil” with a “glowing red eye” on its burning tip, the Moon Tiger is an object that is tied closely to the place and time, Egypt in the 1940s. The titular symbol appears in Chapter 6, during a night that Claudia and Tom spend together in Egypt. In this moment, the Moon Tiger is a spiral-shaped, slow-burning incense lit at their bedside to keep mosquitoes away while they sleep.

The shape of the incense is reminiscent of a clock, with hands ticking around in a circle to mark the passage of time. Claudia observes that, as the spiral of incense burns away, it leaves an ash trail in the same shape, clear evidence of how much time has gone. As Claudia watches the incense burn, “she lies there thinking of nothing, simply being, her whole body content. Another inch of the Moon Tiger feathers down into the saucer” (75-76). When Tom stirs beside her, she suddenly feels anxious, upset that they could have been talking or interacting; she is acutely aware of their limited time together. This tension, Claudia’s utter contentment and deep anxiety together in the same moment, is at the heart of the symbol of the Moon Tiger. The passage of time can render certain moments beautiful, but in part because they are fleeting, just like Claudia’s night with Tom. By titling the novel after this symbol, Lively also draws attention to the importance of Claudia’s time with Tom.

Ammonites

Ammonites, as well as other fossils, symbolize the concept of deep time in Moon Tiger. Ammonites were ancient, snail-like creatures. Their fossils show the coil of their shells, a shape that mirrors the spiral of the Moon Tiger incense, another symbolic gesture to the passage of time and the nature of memory.

Ammonites first appear in Chapter 1 of the novel, when Claudia and Gordon are children and hunting for the fossils on the beach. In this scene, Claudia isn’t interested in the fossils because they are ancient; she is interested in them because she is competing with Gordon to find them. As a young child, she is not yet fascinated by the concepts of history or her relationship with the deep layers of time. Of course, these are concepts that she will eventually become interested in. Thinking back, she notes how the day on the beach feels both distant and present:

A long time ago. And yesterday. I still have a chunk of Blue Lias from Charmouth beach in which hang two grey fossil curls; it has acted as a paperweight on my desk. Two Asteroceras, adrift on a timeless ocean (8).

The fossils come to represent, for Claudia, not only deep time on the scale of the Earth’s history but also time on her own private scale. She associates the fossils with her childhood, with her early relationship with Gordon, things that feel like they were both forever ago and just yesterday.

Claudia discusses the ammonites with Tom in the Egyptian desert in Chapter 7. She tells him that she used to “fight over fossils” with her brother (93), to which Tom responds that he found a fossil of a starfish in the desert. In contrast to Gordon, who drove Claudia to fierce competition, Tom offers the fossil to Claudia freely and straightaway. Remarking on the sense of deep time that the fossils provide, Tom comments that it “somehow puts one in one’s place” (93). Tom’s words capture what the fossils do for Claudia throughout the novel; they help her understand her context, on both a personal and global scale, reinforcing The Intersection of Personal and Global Histories.

The Locket Ring

The ring that Tom buys Claudia in the market in Cairo is a symbol of their relationship, a precious thing kept secret. Tom wants to give Claudia a present while they are browsing in the market. She refuses the first few gifts he offers, before noticing the rings:

And so he buys her a ring, a complex ring the front of which is a little compartment with a conical lid that opens on a hinge. It is called a poison ring, says the shopkeeper. For your enemies [...] The ring sits heavily on her finger. Later that day—or perhaps the next—Tom fills the little box with sand from the Mokattam Hills [...] (111).

The ring’s compartment is designed to be filled with poison. Tom and Claudia instead fill it with sand from the Egyptian desert, to remind her always of their time together.

That a ring meant to be filled with poison becomes a mark of love is a symbolic parallel to the emotional journey that Tom and Claudia are on together. That is, the pair are turning their wartime experience (at least for a while) from something that should be terrifying to a period full of love and hope. That sand, often representative of the passage of time, takes the place intended for poison and foreshadows the end of their relationship.

As with her love affair with Tom, Claudia keeps the ring a secret, and the ring also becomes a marker of the distance between Claudia and her daughter. Though young Lisa notices the ring in her mother’s collection, Claudia never reveals what the ring represents or its origins. A child longing to emulate her mother, Lisa asks for the ring in Chapter 10. Lisa recognizes that the ring is meant to hold treasures: “She would keep things in it, very small and precious things” (125). However, Claudia snatches the ring back, stopping Lisa from emptying the sand out, which Lisa refers to as “dirt.” Without context, which only Claudia can give, Lisa is unable to appreciate her mother’s memories.

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