Allie’s Paintings Symbol Analysis

The paintings Allie creates function as symbols of her innermost dreams and desires—feelings and ideas she struggles to express given her repressed, strait-laced upbringing. Allie is a socialite whose wealthy parents have raised her to believe that money and social status are the most important things in the world. Though Allie exhibits skill as an artist from a young age, her parents discourage her from pursuing painting as a career. As a result, the one finished work she’s ever completed hangs solitary in Noah’s house for years—a reminder that the girl Noah once knew was stronger and more brilliant than anyone but him ever gave her credit for. Noah loves the “sensual,” abstract work Allie creates—but when they reconnect in 1946, he is disappointed when she tells him that she hasn’t painted seriously since college. After reuniting with Noah—and realizing that he’s kept her painting all these years—Allie finds herself inspired to draw and paint once again. Allie’s artmaking is thus a symbol of her pent-up desires at last flowing freely. Art is a release for Allie, and the works of art she makes over the course of the novel’s main story, though small, show that her desire to pursue life on her own terms is reawakening.

In the frame story set far into the future, the elderly Noah reveals that after leaving her wealthy fiancé Lon and settling down with Noah in New Bern, Allie began painting nonstop and eventually became a world-famous artist. Allie’s works now hang in important museums in Paris, New York, and other major cities around the world, symbolizing the emotional, artistic, and spiritual fulfillment that accompanies surrendering oneself to life’s most meaningful pursuits—chiefly, love. Had Allie chosen an easy life as a kept woman living a high-society lifestyle, she might’ve achieved greater material wealth than she ultimately did—but she never would have pursued her passions or discovered her full potential. Allie’s paintings ultimately symbolize the freedom and joy that accompany a surrender to passion, and the fulfillment that comes from a life measured in love rather than in dollars and cents.