48 pages • 1 hour read
Kristin HannahFly Away
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Coping With Grief
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses self-harm, substance use disorder, and suicide.
The grief that both main characters and secondary characters experience due to the death of Kate drives the novel’s conflict. Some deal with grief in healthy ways, such as Kate’s son, Lucas, who, though he acknowledges her death, speaks of her frequently. His actively remembering her serves to comfort him and, in keeping her memory alive, he can keep the sadness at bay. In time, Johnny Ryan can do this as well. His greatest struggle, it seems, is in filling the parenting role that Kate has vacated—he sometimes becomes frustrated that he lacks the skills she possessed; ultimately, though, the bond he has with his sons grows strong and ultimately the relationship between him and Marah is repaired. Kate’s mother, Margie, copes with grief by holding it inside and being a source of strength for others. She frequently reaches out in support to Tully or Marah and assists Johnny with his household where she can. It is not until the end of the novel when she reveals the sadness she has been masking to Dorothy, allowing Dorothy to comfort her.
Both Tully and Marah, however, choose to deal with their grief in ways that prove harmful and ineffective. Each is unwilling to admit to others how much pain she is experiencing. Though Marah’s family, and Johnny in particular, initially reach out to her and encourage her to speak about her pain and sadness, she refuses. Marah withdraws into herself and distances herself from those who are important to her. Further, she inflicts pain on herself via cutting to paradoxically escape from her emotional pain. She then pursues other methods of escape via drugs and alcohol. At times, Marah and Tully can support one another in their grief, but this is short lived. Both are too mired in their pain to open up to the other completely. Tully, too, turns to substances to numb her pain and to help her get through each day. Initially, Tully denies that her substance use is problematic. She is certain that reviving her professional life will nudge her past her sadness, but instead she becomes increasingly dependent on pills to make it through each day. It is only after a suicide attempt—where she is given a “choice” to remain with Kate in the afterlife or return to her life—that Tully is forced to reckon with her grief. For both Tully and Marah, this process involves connecting with other people. For Marah, this means repairing her relationships with Tully and Johnny and fully committing to therapy. For Tully, it is both recognizing that she is loved by the Ryan and Mularkey families and connecting in a meaningful way with her mother that helps her. Both women find ways to remain connected to Kate in a way that is helpful and meaningful.
Confronting the Past
Linked to the dissonance faced by many characters is their inability to confront their pasts. The structure of the novel facilitates this theme by alternating between the present of the novel’s main plot and conflict—Tully’s car accident and resulting brain injury and coma—and various moments in the past. The theme especially touches Tully and her mother, Dorothy. Tully frequently stresses the important role that Kate played beginning in their childhood and continuing to their adult lives. Without Kate’s support to rely on in the future, Tully is stuck not knowing how to move forward. She misses Kate, and though Kate has left reminders—mainly in the form of the music she has arranged in an iPod playlist—these memories prove painful reminders to Tully of what she has lost. Further, as she tries to move forward, she must reckon with the way she abruptly quit her job to be by Kate’s side as Kate battled cancer. In making this decision, Tully unknowingly damaged her professional reputation; none of her contacts are willing to help her re-enter the industry now that she desires to do so. Tully must not only take responsibility for the way she has mishandled her career but also for the people she has hurt or taken advantage of on her rise to success. Further, when she views writing a memoir as the only truly reputable and viable career option, the past proves to be Tully’s biggest obstacle of all. In writing about herself, she must not only be honest about herself, but must delve into her childhood. This means recalling her mother’s absence and neglect, which is painful to Tully. It is only when she can focus on the happy parts of her life instead—by rooting the narrative in her friendship with Kate—that Tully is able to start writing.
Dorothy, too, has a painful past, and her dependence on substances while Tully was growing up is the way she coped with that past. Through her struggle to achieve sobriety, Dorothy learned that addressing her past trauma and pain was necessary before she could move on to a healthy future. She breaks with the person she was when she was neglectful of Tully and her abandoning the name “Cloud” is evidence of this rebirth. She urges Tully to break free of her substance dependence, but Tully is not ready. It is only when Dorothy can model her recovery from her past for Tully that readers gain hope that Tully is on the path to doing the same herself.
Models of Motherhood
The novel presents several examples of mothers. Important to several conflicts is the trope of the absent mother. This is the case for both Marah, due to Kate’s death, and Tully, because of her estranged relationship from Dorothy due to Dorothy’s abandonment and neglect. From the novel’s opening, Johnny and others around him are certain that Marah, more than Kate’s other children, will find her death especially difficult to deal with. He and Tully both stress Kate’s gift as a mother, knowing just the right thing to say to comfort a child during a difficult time and unfailingly demonstrating her parental love so that it was unmistakable to both Marah and her brothers. Marah reveals memories of Kate’s protectiveness—recalling her anger when Kate would not permit her to dress in certain ways or other shows of authority. Upon Kate’s absence, however, Marah realizes this protection was meted out by love and care for Marah’s well-being. Marah feels guilt for the way she retaliated against this loving authority and the ways she lashed out at Kate when she was alive. Importantly, however, Kate was fully aware that these were not Marah’s true feelings—that both mother and daughter loved and cared for one another, despite petty squabbles. Kate reveals this in her journal, anticipating that Marah will be upset when Kate is gone.
Tully tries to temporarily fill Kate’s shoes once she is gone. She recognizes the pain Marah is experiencing, but knows she is ill-equipped to effectively handle it. Tully attributes this, in large part, to her own lack of motherly guidance. Indeed, Tully resorts to bargaining with Marah, agreeing to deny or cover up behaviors she knows Johnny will deem reprehensible, such as drinking and spending time with Paxton. Tully takes a matter-of-fact approach with Marah, affirming her insistence that it is useless to talk through her grief with others.
Just as Marah finds healing in her relationship with her mother through Kate’s journal, Tully too achieves affirmation of her mother’s love. Much of the latter parts of the novel address Dorothy’s lack of ability to be a good mother (due, in part, to the way her own mother denied the pain and abuse Dorothy suffered as a child). However, her narration reveals that her love for Tully has persisted throughout Tully’s life, despite Dorothy’s inability to convey it to Tully. Importantly, Dorothy is aware of the importance to Tully of what she has withheld from her—information about her past; information about Tully’s father; and indications of her love for Tully—and selflessly is ready to provide Tully with those things in the present. In this way, the novel demonstrates the ways in which mothers can be ill-equipped to mother but can overcome these mistakes and develop a strong and meaningful bond with their daughters.
Related Titles
By Kristin Hannah
