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Armistice (II), 12 Nov 1918
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Life After Life, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Life, Reincarnation, and Alternate Possibilities
Fate vs. Choice
Family and Love
War and Death
Gender Roles and Expectations
Summary
Analysis
Sylvie lights a candle; Ursula is asleep in her cradle. Sylvie thinks to herself that childbirth is a brutal affair. Sylvie goes to the window; the snow has “obliterated everything familiar.” She sees George Glover riding one of his horses through the snow, but convinces herself that it was a hallucination. Sylvie feeds Ursula, who seems confused by the process, and wonders about her own breakfast.
Atkinson continues to expand upon and move forward with the events of the morning of Ursula’s birth, once again resetting the timeline. The snow, a symbol of randomness, demonstrates how the unpredictability of the world can render people feeling lost or in constantly unfamiliar territory, despite the fact that the book overall argues for a general sense of fate.
Themes
