47 pages • 1 hour read
Alex LightThe Upside of Falling
Alex LightFiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020A 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
Football
In The Upside of Falling, the main characters each have a strong connection to a hobby that encapsulates their past and their future. For Brett, football is more than just a sport or a means of achieving popularity and admiration: It is a powerful reminder of his loyalty to his father and his dreams of getting out of Crestmont. In a town like Crestmont, football is celebrated with a near-religious zeal: Football games are community affairs, and as the captain of the football team, Brett is celebrated as a hero or town royalty.
When Brett arrives in his English class in Chapter 1, Becca notes his “navy-blue varsity jacket hanging off the back of his chair” like “a flag, announcing who he [is]: Brett Wells, captain of the football team” (4). The varsity jacket symbolizes Brett’s status in a world where football players are considered minor celebrities, and although Brett does not boast this status, his jacket sets him apart. When Becca and Brett begin their fake-dating relationship, he gives Becca one of his football jerseys with his name stitched across the back. By wearing Brett’s jersey, Becca aligns herself with Brett in a public setting, and the jersey and the jacket both point toward Brett’s stardom as a football player. Becca is finally forced to attend one of Brett's football games as his pretend girlfriend, and she is pleasantly surprised by her experience. Becca “begin[s] to understand why so many people spent their Friday nights sitting out here with blue paint on their cheeks and gold ribbons in their hair” because it makes Becca “feel like [she] [is] a part of something bigger than [her]self” (61). Football represents a world of community and small-town celebration, and after years of isolating herself, Becca gets a glimpse of what she has been missing in high school.
Football also represents the level of control Brett’s father has over his life. Brett’s father played for the same team as his son and held the same title of football captain, and as a devoted alumnus, Brett’s father “[buys] [the team] new gear every few months and [keeps] the field in perfect shape” (16). The football team at Crestmont reminds Brett’s father of his glory days, and when Brett learns the truth about his father’s “business trips,” he regrets “obsessing over football to impress [his] dad” and “practicing day and night” (187) to become the best, all to please a man who lied to his wife and son. Brett starts to wonder if he enjoys football or only played it to please his dad. Nonetheless, Brett decides that he can’t let his team down, so despite his father’s betrayal, he stays with it because he has come to love the sense of community and brotherhood he feels with his team. For Brett, football has become more than his father’s favorite pastime: It represents his love for his school, friends, and community.
Becca’s Romance Novels
While Brett is known for his connection to the football field, Becca can always be found with a book. Becca has a collection of romance novels, and there are several that she has read many times. Becca tells Brett that reading “gives [her] all the fun without the pain” (150), and as long as she is reading about love, there’s no need to experience it herself and live through the heartache of rejection and breakups. Becca’s beloved romance novels represent her burning desire to feel the swoon-inducing ecstasy of love and her fear of falling in love.
At the novel's beginning, Jenny warns Becca that the kind of love depicted in romance novels isn’t realistic. Jenny says that Becca’s books are unrealistic, and she is “setting [her]self up for disappointment” (10). Becca argues that reading about other people’s romances is a great way to feel love without risking her own heart, and she says that her books keep her safe from ever experiencing heartache. Still, Becca knows that the books are unrealistic: They always end when the fictional couple gets together, and the reader never has to see the part where the characters break up. Becca admits that she started reading this fiction genre because she wanted to read something “so completely outrageous and find comfort in the fact that the fictional love and heartbreak would never happen to me” (202). Romance novels were a way for Becca to distance herself from the real world of dating, and this cognitive dissonance allows Becca to be both a cynic and lover of romance. She calls these books “crap” but admits she can’t stop reading them. The novels speak to a deeper level of herself that Becca doesn’t entirely understand: She craves love, and the books satisfy this craving in some capacity, but not entirely: which is why she eventually falls in love with Brett.
When Becca starts to develop real feelings for Brett, she states that “[the] lines between what [is] real and what [is] fake [starts] to blur, and [she] can’t tell the two apart anymore” (175). For Becca, romance has always been fictional, and as soon as it starts to become real in her world, she can’t stop the story like she can when she is reading. The situation feels out of control, which fills her with fear. When Brett breaks up with her, Becca turns all her hurt and anger toward her books. After all, the books made Becca think that love would be carefree and happy, and she feels completely unprepared to deal with the fallout and heartbreak of a soured relationship. As Jenny tells her, “No one can live up to some romance [Becca] read about when [she] [was] fourteen” (213). The books were never meant to be a representation of real-life romance, and although the books might have kept Becca’s heart “safe” from heartbreak, they offered only a watered-down depiction of the intensity of love. Light shows that even the best romance novels cannot capture the full adventure of being in love. Experiencing love firsthand is a completely different feeling than reading about it.
Baking
When Becca was a child, her mother’s baking was comically bad—“Like, inedible levels of horror” (27) that resulted in rock-hard pancakes and super-salty cakes. However, years later, Becca’s mom opened a successful bakery that has the town talking. In The Upside of Falling, baking is more than just the Harts’ livelihood: It symbolizes their life after divorce, hope for the future, and the mother-daughter bond that ties Becca and her mother together.
When Brett starts looking at Becca’s online profile in chapter 2, he finds a picture of Becca and Cassie in the kitchen with “flour and frosting on their faces” (21). When Jenny abandoned Becca at the beginning of freshman year, Becca started hanging out with Cassie, the daughter of her mom’s business partner. Together, the girls bonded over their mothers’ business, and they both started working at the bakery. Baking helped bring new friends to Becca, adding stability to her life when her former best friend left her. Ironically, the bakery brings Jenny and Becca back together as friends. Jenny decides to spread the word about Becca’s mom’s bakery, and in the process, she gets herself and a few of the football players hooked on the bakery’s signature jelly bells. Becca and Brett share a bag of jelly bells in front of the arcade, and Becca notices Jeff eating jelly bells at the school lunch table. Sweet treats bring people together, and Light uses jelly bells to forge bonds between characters throughout the novel.
For Becca’s mom, baking became something akin to therapy. Becca knows that her mom tried to be strong after Becca’s father left. Because her mother didn’t allow herself to have an emotional breakdown, she “bottled up all the pain, and the only way she could release it was by mixing flour and eggs into a bowl and whisking all her sadness away” (27). Becca’s mother didn’t allow herself to break down: Instead, she focused all her time and energy on getting better at something that brought her joy. When the bakery opened, Becca’s father even stopped by to congratulate his ex-wife on her new business. Light includes this detail to show that Becca’s mom didn’t allow herself to become bitter. The opposite of bitterness is sweetness, and by filling her life with baked goods and sugary treats, Becca’s mom literally and symbolically chose to embrace the sweet things in life. There is no ill will between Becca’s mom and dad, and Becca’s mom didn’t start the bakery to prove her ex-husband wrong or to make a point: She did it because it brought her happiness.
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