Cemetery Symbol Analysis

The local cemetery where John likes to hang out and drink beers symbolizes the presence of death in John’s thoughts and in life in general. It also symbolizes society’s unwillingness to talk openly about death—and the negative consequences of that unwillingness, particularly on young people like John and Lorraine. Lorraine recalls how, early in her and John’s friendship, John invited her to have a beer with him at his favorite place to drink: the Moravian Cemetery. Though Lorraine thinks a cemetery is a strange place to drink, she reasons that it makes sense for John, given his dysfunctional home life. Thus, Lorraine implicitly suggests that John’s interest in the cemetery (and by extension death itself) is a symptom of John’s psychological distress and unhappiness. A person with a happy life and loving family, Lorraine seems to imply, wouldn’t be so consumed by thoughts of death, and they certainly wouldn’t choose to hang out in a cemetery. Early on, then, the book suggests that, to most people, thinking about death and acknowledging death publicly is abnormal and unhealthy. 

Later, in a section John narrates, John sheds light on what attracts him to the cemetery. He explains that being in the cemetery makes him think about the largeness of the universe, all the corpses buried beneath him, and about the inevitability of his own death. He later wonders if death might be preferable to life, since living people (Lorraine included) think he’s strange for thinking about big things like death all the time. The cemetery thus becomes something of an elephant in the room: it’s a super obvious visual reminder of death and people’s discomfort with talking about it. But, as the novel makes clear, not talking about death doesn’t make death anxiety go away. To the contrary, it only worsens anxiety. Lorraine is haunted by “bad omens” foreshadowing Mr. Pignati’s death, for instance, and John’s unspoken thoughts about death continue to plague him, too.