#back on my pippaposting

[heterodickpaper]

examining pippa & her relationship with theo through her end of book letter, part 1: pippa's feelings

disclaimer: do not expect this to be polished it's very stream-of-consciousness and though i did edit it i'm too lazy to go back and format it nicely. i'll try and have part 2 up within the week--this one is more focused on pippa's feelings for theo and part 2 is more about theo's feelings for pippa and how they change throughout the book. if you have any thoughts about this feel free to message me!! i'm always down to talk about tgf

if i ever wrote an essay about pippa’s characterization and her feelings for theo i would have a lot to say about her letter to him at the end of the book. because at first i was like huh??? she loves him??? and i had a few possible rationalizations for this which were: 1. no she doesn’t she just pities him 2. no she doesn’t (she loves me) 3. she does but in a friend way 4. she actually does and i did not like option 4 at all because what??? after all that?? she has to deal with this awkward clumsy obsessive guy who is frankly a terrible black-hole mess of a person for years and she loves him?? why?? after theo spends the whole book telling us she hates him only for him to be wrong at the last minute?? it was unfathomable to me. at first it seemed like the realization of richard’s fantasies of camilla in the secret history—the idealized dream girl actually loves the average guy who’s never done anything to deserve her back!!! it bothered me so much. i mean there were absolutely no signposts! in fact he tells us multiple times that she might even be repulsed by him!! maybe it seems dumb that i didn’t realize until i thought about it but it took me a while to realize that that’s the point!!! the more i thought about it the more i realized that it’s not a dream come true at all, and what it really is changes everything (which is interesting considering the relatively little time the book spends on it but more on that later). first, while pippa is kind of a camilla-like character on the surface (by “on the surface” i mean the way we/theo see her), we’re shown proof that she actually has a life, that she’s a real person—theo just doesn’t see her that way because the lens he views her through is warped by trauma (rather than camilla, who’s portrayed through the male gaze). and that’s why rather than being a ridiculous and unrealistic happy ending or proof that pippa’s character really is as shallow as the knowledge theo has of her, her letter is a callout of both him and the reader. it’s the first real glimpse we have into her true feelings surrounding her trauma and once we have it it seems painfully obvious—she has theo’s exact same trauma; it makes sense that she would have complicated feelings around him too. it must be devastating for her to go back to new york which is already hard for her and see theo and have him practically throwing himself at her at every opportunity and she has to be the responsible one. but theo never even considers that. that’s why her letter is as much his dream come true as it is a reality check—a slap in the face reminding him that he doesn’t really know her, and not even just in terms of recognizing her feelings! after reading the letter, it takes theo a few moments to get what she means about them dragging each other down: “I realized…with considerable astonishment, what she was getting at.” he puts together pieces (which were pretty obvious to me in spite of being told by theo, who doesn’t even notice them) that he’s never recognized as belonging to the same puzzle, even knowing her medical history, the schools she attended, physical signs he passes off as “adorable” quirks. even having her literal exact same trauma! seeing her infrequently doesn’t justify this--this is because of theo’s perpetual inward focus. it does make sense that there are some things he wouldn’t know about her; throughout the book pippa tries to distance herself from theo and keep their relationship purely platonic, because she’s much more rational than him and she deals with her feelings in a different and probably healthier way (but gosh what an good friend! she comes to his engagement party and talks with his weird greasy russian friend and still maintains a friendly relationship with theo despite the obstacles he throws in her path and she never lets on how hard it must be for her. i love pippa). she does her best to move on, something theo just can’t do. but at the same time--her offhand comments & little touches, which theo only takes in in the context of his reactions to them, might mean something

completely different told by a more reliable, less self-centered narrator. so her letter is also another of the many things that show just how unreliable theo is, despite at first seeming flimsy and improbable. theo’s characterization and plot arc necessitates that we can’t know for sure, but it’s clear at least that pippa’s feelings for theo are as complex as his for her--she’s just better at hiding them, and she understands and accepts that because of their nature, she and theo can’t be together.

and i think she’s right--it’s not something irrational holding her back. the impossibility of their relationship is made very clear in the book because of the ways they’re juxtaposed with each other, particularly in terms of how they deal with their trauma. this is an especially pertinent point because it’s at the heart of every interaction they have with each other. the longest conversation they have, and the only really meaningful one mentioned in the book except for “the rich passionate talk” they had during “her visit the previous summer”, is entirely about the explosion and its effects in one area or another. it begins with pippa telling theo about how she can’t watch live music because of it, and ends with theo talking about how he ended up at hobie’s (611-618). and though it’s the thing that unifies them, it’s also the thing that divides them--theo longed to get back to new york when he was in vegas, while pippa can hardly stand to be there. he’s built his After life around the barbours, figures from Before, while pippa has made hers by moving to another continent. and by the end of the book it seems like she had the right of it--traveling around the world, away from home, is the closest theo has gotten to maybe reaching some kind of peace.