Fireworks Symbol Analysis

Fireworks symbolize fraught the fraught class divisions between ordinary and powerful families in the novel. Each year, the residents of Lila and Lenù’s neighborhood put on grand fireworks displays for New Year’s Eve. The biggest of all these displays is always that of the Solara family, who are relatives of Silvio, a wealthy neighborhood loan shark and Camorrist (gangster). Marcello and Michele Solara, Silvio’s sons, buy up fireworks from stores all over Naples—and one year, Lila’s brother Rino becomes determined to put on a display that will rival theirs. As Rino collects money from his friends and neighbors in order to purchase fireworks, it seems as if he’ll be able to best the Solaras after all—but on New Year’s Eve, as the dueling displays get under way, it becomes clear that the Solaras’ wealth will always enable them to squash their neighbors. Their family’s ability to dominate something as frivolous as this New Year’s celebration reflects their ongoing domination in more meaningful realms—namely, business, wealth, and positions of power.

As Rino becomes more and more furious and continues setting off more and more fireworks, Lila experiences something akin to a panic attack as the boundaries of those around her and the landscape of the neighborhood begin to break apart and “dissolve,” revealing the rotten core of cruelty, competition, and male violence at the heart of everything in her life. When the Solaras seem to have run out of fireworks, they begin shooting guns at Rino, Lila, and their gathered friends and guests in a final show of dominance and vengeance. Fireworks, then, come to represent the futility—and the danger—of attempts on the part of ordinary families like the Cerullos to combat, disrupt, or even begin to challenge the indomitable forces of money, power, and inherited financial and social capital.