A Month Of Summer Literary Analysis

In Lisa Wingate’s A Month of Summer, the protagonist illustrates the theme “the heart is often clouded by the past, unwilling to forget”. Rebecca Macklin is untrusting of others ,finding men despicable because of her father abandoning her mother and herself when she was a child. Guided by this experience she grows up believing that all men are unfaithful and insensitive. Rebecca is a forty-five year old woman often skeptical of relationships and cynical of men. She lived thirty years of her life hating her father due to him choosing another woman over her family and leaving them. Although Rebecca is still deeply scarred by her father’s indifference towards her, she finds herself back in California knocking on his door, wanting to tend to his failing

Five items that represent Rebecca’s character are: clematis, letters, a wristwatch, a DVD, and a pair of keys. Clematis is a bittersweet memory that can be compared with Rebecca’s feelings for her father: “ I wanted to rip out all of the flowers, stomp on them, destroy the memories of my father but somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to ruin the clematis” (104). Rebecca hates her father and everything having to do with him, but she couldn’t shake off her love for clematis, the flower that represents mental beauty and art that shaped her childhood. Like Clematis, the letters represents her delicate side that treasures love, fears the lack of it, and tries to convey her feelings as well as she can: “ I wanted to write to Macey and tell her how much I missed her” (56). When Rebecca panics and feels hopeless, she writes personal letters to those she cares about, such as her daughter Macey. She thinks that if she does not convey her feelings enough, the people around her would not understand. Item number three, a wristwatch, showcases forgiveness over time: “Time was moving too