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.
Themes
Appearance, Being Fully Seen, and Human Connection
Tess’s struggle over wanting to be seen and wanting to be invisible is a persistent tension throughout the book. This tension is beautifully expressed in the story of Tess riding in a wheelchair at Disney World, an experience she describes as being “famous and invisible at the same time” (54). Tess simultaneously longs to be known, with her flaws and her traumatic past, and longs to be invisible, keeping the more difficult aspects of her life hidden. At the beginning of the novel, Tess feels “excluded” from her mother and David’s grief, isolated and misunderstood. Furthermore, Tess notes that David’s story about her got her all wrong, indicating his lack of understanding of the “true” Tess. Tess’s departure to her father’s is a way for her to hide, to become “invisible” again.
Ironically, by hiding in her father’s neighborhood, Tess discovers ways to reveal her true self and be fully known. In her father’s neighborhood, the proximity of the houses represents greater intimacy and reflects Tess’s inability to hide or remain isolated. The lack of physical distance indicates that Tess must be seen and perceived and reflects the intimate relationships Tess forms while staying at her father’s, most notably with her father and with Jimmy Freeze. Even so, revealing her true self feels dangerous to Tess, and she remains closed off, signaling an unexpressed fear that those around her might abandon her if they knew the truth about Zoe. As such, she represses the story of Zoe and her past, but this repression is a great source of internal conflict for Tess. Even as Jimmy reveals more about his life to Tess, Tess keeps her past a secret, resisting being fully emotionally intimate with Jimmy. Tess doesn’t reveal her involvement with Zoe’s death to Jimmy until late in the book, at which point she says, “it’s not enough that Mom is getting better if I’m not, if being at my Dad’s is just hiding” (168). Tess’s apprehension over revealing this part of herself is assuaged when Jimmy, after learning Tess’s story, reaffirms his love for her.
These themes are externalized in Tess’s obsession with makeup and her appearance, articulated throughout the book. Makeup serves both as a mask to protect Tess from being fully seen, and as a way to attract the attention she desperately craves. Tess’s letters to Zoe are a structural articulation of this tension: By writing to her dead younger sister, Tess is revealing parts of her life, though she is revealing them in letters that Zoe won’t read. In this way, Tess is revealing her secrets to herself, suggesting that Tess’s letter writing is a way for her to fully see herself—a way for her to come to terms with herself.
Grief, Trauma, and Escapism
Much of the book explores Tess and her family’s evolving relationship with grief over Zoe’s death. Indeed, the title of the book reflects the central role of Zoe’s death in the novel, and by writing letters to her sister, Tess is working through her grief. Furthermore, Zoe’s death happens on September 11, complicating the characters’ experience of grief and trauma. The family struggles with feeling like Zoe’s death is overshadowed by the larger, more public national tragedy, adding another layer to their devastation. Tess in particular feels resentful of the victims of September 11 for taking attention away from Zoe’s death, and then subsequent guilt over those unpleasant feelings. Tess’s nightmares, however, center on the blood of the victims and Zoe’s blood, suggesting that both these traumas haunt her.
Tess’s experience of grief includes moments of depression, which she vividly describes as a “deep dark hole” (31), as well as moments of suicidal ideation. Memories of Zoe, unable to be repressed, surface periodically throughout the novel. Tess is isolated and unable to connect with those around her. Furthermore, Tess’s grief is entangled with the trauma of having witnessed Zoe’s accident and her death. As such, grief for Tess is complicated by feelings of avoidance, feeling guilty, and nightmares. Particular sounds are triggers for Tess, reminding her of Zoe’s death and transporting her back to that moment. At church with her father, for example, the congregation’s singing causes Tess to run from the church screaming. Later, the “bump-bump” of the truck hitting Frank and the sound of the headboard prompt vivid recollections of the day of Zoe’s death.
Many characters engage in escapism as a coping mechanism throughout the course of the book. Tess physically leaves her mother and David’s house, choosing to stay with her father; David spends long hours in the office; Tess’s mother sleeps excessively and engages in a flirtation with Justin, the grocery store clerk. Even characters not struggling with grief engage in escapism: Nick drinks many beers nightly. Tess’s relationship with Jimmy and her experimentation with marijuana is also escapism, though not all escapism is portrayed as negative or psychologically damaging. Indeed, for Tess, moving closer to Jimmy and momentarily forgetting some of the pain around Zoe’s death is crucial to her development. Her escapism brings her close to Jimmy, allowing her to more fully look at and share her grief, a critical step toward Tess’s healing. Tess’s final cathartic moment in the grass where Zoe landed after she was hit suggests an evolution of her relationship with grief, where she is able to confront her pain and loss more fully rather than avoiding it. Consequently, Tess begins to carry around Zoe’s picture with her, looking at her and remembering her, rather than repressing those memories. The end of the book, however, suggests not a tidy resolution to grief, but rather an ongoing relationship with grief that ebbs and flows with time.
Fate, Chance, and the Unpredictability of Life
For Tess, trying to understand the sequence of events that led to Zoe’s death is part of processing her grief. She is fascinated by the idea that “everything is so random but so connected, how everything seems like it’s both a total matter of chance and predetermined at the same time” (32). Tess’s observation resembles the theories of the butterfly effect or the domino effect, which suggest that a small change in starting conditions can lead to completely different outcomes. That Zoe’s death occurred on September 11 contributes to Tess’s feeling of randomness and fate: Tess ascribes a great deal of meaning to these two coincidental events and seeks to understand how both came to pass. Understanding the exact chain of events that led to Zoe’s death is part of Tess’s way of processing her grief, going as far back as the moment that David met her mother in the grocery store. Trying to understand how everything fits together, however, actually contributes to Tess’s depression and grief rather than alleviating it: “The only order that made sense was me going down that ladder” (32). Tess’s fixation on the events that led to Zoe’s death is evidence of her rumination and focus on the past, indicative on her inability to move forward.
At the beginning of the novel, Tess asserts, “Nothing changes everything […]. We could have named you anything and it would have all come out the same” (5). Tess believes that Zoe’s death was always fated. Contrarily, she also asserts that naming Zoe “Zoe” seemed to help shape Zoe’s character in some way, with Zoe’s nickname “Z” representing “the shape of her life” (3). By the end of the novel, however, Tess muses, that “maybe everything changes everything. […] Maybe “Z” is the shape of everyone’s life” (195). Tess thinks that her transition into adulthood will be marked by being able to see and understand what’s going to happen next in her life; ironically, however, Tess’s coming of age is marked by her realization that life is unpredictable and sometimes random, and that there’s no way of knowing what will happen next. This randomness is echoed in the book’s motif of rollercoasters and amusement park rides: The wildness and dramatic turns of the rides resemble the dramatic turns of a life.
Structurally, the book mimics the shape of the “Z.” Rather than follow a linear or chronological story, the story weaves back and forth through time, with Tess remembering moments from Zoe’s childhood, Tess’s own childhood, and various other flashbacks. Certain memories will change the course of Tess’s narration, echoing the pivot of the “Z.” The book’s structure underscores this major theme of the book, seemingly unpredictable and random but possessing its own internal logic and order.
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