69 pages • 2 hours read
Jennifer A. NielsenUprising
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Lidia’s Piano
Content Warning: This section refers to wartime violence and death.
Lidia’s piano is a symbolic representation of the old life that Lidia used to live. The author introduces the piano in the first few pages of the text, as Lidia uses it to play music poorly to annoy Mama. Then, after returning to Warsaw, Lidia laments the loss of her piano, noting that it is the “only thing [she] value[s] in [their] entire house” (31). Lidia’s entire life before the war surrounded her love of the piano, as her family moved to Warsaw for her to attend school for it, and several characters—like Stefan—remember her playing music within the community. However, when her family loses their home, she is forced to let go of her piano. She must leave behind her old life and, with it, the joy and beauty she experiences playing the piano.
The novel initially portrays the piano as something extraneous, a representation of the irrelevance of art in a country being torn apart by war. In this way, it symbolizes the comforts and joys in Lidia’s life that she is forced to leave behind to fight in the resistance. However, in a conversation with Gray, Gray emphasizes the importance of the piano and its relevance to life. When Lidia tells her that she learned that “every note counts” in music, Gray compares it to life, saying that people “all live in this great symphony, each of [them] an instrument that [they] play for the world. If [they] lose one, the song is never quite what it was meant to be” (184). The piano conveys the theme of The Importance of Family, Friendship, and Community. Gray recognizes the importance of not only the resistance movement but also the importance of each person within that movement. Like a piece of music, the parts all work together to achieve their aim. This metaphor also shows that there is value in music. Even if Lidia is forced to leave her piano behind, her love of music still holds relevance in their life amid war.
Papa’s Gold Cufflinks
Like Lidia’s piano, Papa’s gold cufflinks are also a symbolic representation of the past that Lidia is leaving behind. When Lidia goes to collect something from each of their rooms, she takes Papa’s cufflinks because they remind her of the parties he used to attend and the happiness he had before the war began. She then carries the cufflinks with her throughout the rest of the novel, moving them to Doda’s apartment and then carrying them with her in her work with the resistance.
Papa’s cufflinks support the theme of Self-Sacrifice and Resilience Against Genocidal Violence. In joining the war, Papa sacrifices his life to fight back against Nazi occupation. He leaves behind the life of luxury and wealth that he had, instead choosing to fight alongside the other people in Poland. In this way, his cufflinks—made of gold and a symbol of his status—are cast aside. This mirrors how his wealth and status are cast aside when people of Poland from all backgrounds must fight together.
Ultimately, Lidia uses the cufflinks as a source of money as she, Maryna, and Weasel flee Poland as the Nazis retake control of Warsaw. In this way, Lidia is symbolically severing her connection to her past and using something she took to remember her father as a source of money to save her life.
Home
One important motif throughout Uprising is the definition of “home” and how it is not a physical location but instead defined by the people that one surrounds themself with. Doda first introduces this idea when she points out to Lidia that even though her apartment is small and rundown compared to Lidia’s previous home, “[t]his is only another place with four walls. Whenever we are with those we love, we are home” (85). The idea comforts Lidia, who is devasted by the loss of her piano, just as Mama struggles to adapt to their life without the luxury of their wealthy status. In this way, the idea of a home supports the theme of The Importance of Family, Friendship, and Community. Lidia learns throughout her journey that the physical space she is in is much less important than the people with whom she is there. As she loses Papa and Ryszard and fails to rekindle her relationship with Mama, she replaces them with people like Maryna, Drill, and Weasel. Even though she is in the middle of a warzone, she feels more at home than she ever has, fighting alongside those she has come to love.
The novel reinforces this idea when Lidia revisits her old neighborhood with Engineer. As she looks at all the things in her old apartment, she realizes that most of them are now “useless.” The things that meant so much to her before are no longer important to her because they hold no value in their fight against Nazi control. What she formerly considered her “home” is now a collection of “useless” things; it does not compare to the people fighting alongside her.
In the final part of the text, the author reaffirms this idea when Lidia chooses to leave Europe to seek out her mother. She never returns to Poland and goes to the United States instead. As she greets her mother on the doorstep and hugs her, she acknowledges that they can now begin to “rebuild” their lives now that the war has ended. Even though she is in a new country far away from her native Poland, Lidia can start a new home with a renewed relationship with her mother.
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By Jennifer A. Nielsen
