58 pages • 1 hour read
Philip BeardDear Zoe
Philip BeardFiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2004A 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
Makeup, Beauty, and Appearance
Makeup is a fixation for Tess over the course of the book, and Tess’s appearance is directly tied to her self-worth. Her face, she feels, is “basically okay but needs some help to look pretty” (26). By comparison, Tess frequently describes her mother as stunningly beautiful, more so than Tess: “[…] she’s just beautiful. And not just in the way that makes strangers look at her longer than they realize but also in that way you never get tired of” (44). Tess’s lengthy beauty routine is a source of conflict with David, often causing her to miss the bus to school. In fact, on the day of Zoe’s death, Tess misses the bus, and while it is never explicitly stated, her morning routine may have contributed to her missing the bus on the day Zoe died. Jimmy insists that Tess doesn’t need makeup, and his birthday gift to Tess is a palm-sized makeup bag that he says should hold all of the makeup she’ll ever need for the rest of her life.
Tess’s extensive use of products and makeup is typical in some ways, and her friends’ routines take even longer than hers. She also says, however, that she enjoys applying makeup more than actually wearing it because it feels as though she’s “making a different person” (92). For Tess, makeup is a mask she wears, one that allows her to leave her old identity behind and assume a new one. Makeup erases her old face, and with it, the grief and guilt over having lost Zoe. Paradoxically, makeup also draws attention to her face, and Tess desperately wants to be seen, both by boys such as Jimmy and by her family members. Jimmy’s insistence that Tess doesn’t need makeup suggests that he truly sees Tess, understanding her beyond the mask she wears and appreciating her for the person she is.
The Truck
Tess’s father’s truck has such a presence in this book that it begins to feel like a character itself, “like this mobile member of the community everybody recognized” (95). With literal holes in the floor and colored lime-green and black, the truck is charming but flawed, much like Tess’s father. It exists in a long line of cars he drives, all “in some state of disintegration” (17). The rotating line-up of cars reveals Nick to be a morally gray figure because he junks them before he has them inspected; they also seem to be symptomatic of his lower socioeconomic status. Furthermore, the cars and the truck underscore the lack of consistency in Nick’s life, and Tess realizes he uses the back of the truck to deal drugs. Impractical and not entirely safe—when Nick drives Em home from school, Em and Tess double-buckle without shoulder belts—the truck betrays a lack of responsibility on Nick’s part. Indeed, at one point Tess puts her foot through the floor of the truck, mildly injuring herself.
Nevertheless, the truck’s recognizability forces Tess to be seen, to become a member of her father’s community. The truck also comes to be a special place for Tess, Em, and Nick, a haven for the sisters during Em’s rides home from school. While Tess is humiliated by the truck, Em loves it, and the lack of proper seats forces physical closeness and intimacy between them. Tess and Em have one of their most intimate conversations about Em’s grief over Zoe in the truck. The truck plays a significant role in forcing Tess to confront her grief about Zoe: The truck hitting Frank is an echo of the car killing Zoe. The truck is notable in that Tess imagines her father will save her in a “rusted-out chariot” (54), and in some ways, the truck proves to be just that, in spite of all its flaws: Tess’s time with her father helps her heal.
September 11
The novel mostly takes place in 2002, the year following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. Tess has complicated feelings toward September 11 as Zoe’s death occurred on the very same day. While those around her are dealing with and processing a national tragedy, Tess is grieving a personal tragedy. While Tess and many others are grappling with loss from this day, Tess feels that the loss of Zoe is overshadowed by the national tragedy. Nevertheless, Tess is processing the double trauma of witnessing her sister’s death while also witnessing (on television) the destruction of the twin towers. While either one of these traumatic moments would be enough to cause grief, guilt, and internal conflict, Tess carries the double burden with her throughout the book. Tess feels additional guilt because she doesn’t feel quite the same about September 11 as those around her. She feels angry that Zoe won’t be remembered properly and resentful of the September 11 victims. Her resentment causes feelings of more guilt, a self-recrimination spiral that leaves her mired in negative feelings and unable to move forward.
She finds a moment of catharsis with her family toward the end of the book when she realizes, with the help of her family, that her mother and David also feel “numb” to the videos, distant from the experience of collective grief over national tragedy. The coincidental nature of these two events also causes Tess to reflect on chance, randomness, and fate. The connection between the date also causes Tess to empathize with others, imagining the lives of other people who died on September 11 but not because of the attacks. She comes to understand that “there are thousands and thousands of little deaths, tiny tragedies, and that all of them matter” (194). Ultimately, the best way to honor Zoe on the anniversary of September 11 is to focus on their personal experience rather than the experience of the outside world.
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