The Long Call

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-8

Chapters 9-15

Chapters 16-24

Chapters 25-33

Chapters 34-43

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Albatross Tattoo

Simon Walden had an albatross tattooed on his neck. Early in the novel, Gaby explains what the albatross meant to Simon. She explains, “He says he carried guilt round with him like the Ancient Mariner, so he had the tat done to remind him” (31). The albatross is an oft-revisited symbol from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” a poem in which a sailor kills an albatross in anger despite the bird’s status as a good-luck charm that helps to direct the ship to warmer seas. As punishment for his crime, the sailor’s crewmates force him to wear the dead bird around his neck. In subsequent works of literature, the image of the albatross has often been invoked as a symbol of the weight of guilt. Notably, Simon chooses to tattoo the albatross on his neck, for this choice aligns him with the Ancient Mariner and makes the symbol of his guilt public, readily visible to anyone he interacts with. This choice emphasizes the fact that Simon defines himself by his guilt and quite literally makes it a part of his body, permanently attaching it to his skin so that he will never forget his crime.

Although Simon permanently attached the albatross to his own body, he did feel that he would eventually be able to “get rid” of the albatross so that he could “face the world again” (284). Before his death, he thought that unearthing the truth of the assault on Rosa could alleviate some of his guilt. His sense that he could eventually rid himself of the weight of his guilt suggests that Simon had a complex and ambivalent attitude toward the nature of guilt. The permanence of the tattoo suggests his belief that the guilt he felt over the accidental killing would always be with him, but he also understood that his relationship with that guilt could be changed through good deeds.

The Woodyard Centre

The Woodyard Centre is at the very heart of the mystery of Simon’s murder. It is what brings Simon and Lucy together, and it is the focus of Simon’s passion through the final days of his life. Ironically, it is also how Simon meets the men and women who eventually kill him. The Woodyard—“A glorious community hub bringing people together” (76)—is a complex representation of the joys and perils of community-building. The Centre quite literally functions as a microcosm of Devon society by connecting people from all walks of life, including the very wealthy and powerful who run the Centre, like Salter and Preece; people like Gaby and Lucy, who make a living from the Centre; and men like Simon, who come to the Woodyard in search of a new direction in life. Jonathan’s dream in creating the Woodyard is to provide a space and a voice for members of society who are often pushed to the margins—like the community of women with Down syndrome and ex-convict Simon Walden. The Woodyard—at least in its conception—represents a utopian vision of what community-building could look like and what it might achieve.

However, Jonathan’s dream of a utopian artistic community is short-lived. Upon discovering the extent of the Woodyard’s involvement in Simon’s death, he laments that he “always thought of the Woodyard as a kind of sanctuary. Not a place where terrible things happen to the people who belong here” (177). If the Woodyard functions as a microcosm of the Devon community, then the Centre’s fate over the course of the novel speaks to Cleeves’s broader commentary on the outcomes of community-building within a highly stratified class system. The Woodyard fails to create a place of belonging for marginalized people because the wealthy people who control the Centre use their clout to maintain their respectability. In the Woodyard, true community-building cannot coexist when the stories of marginalized people are silenced by those who wish to maintain control of their surroundings.

Birds

The Long Call employs a great deal of avian imagery, from Simon Walden’s albatross tattoo and the birds that Colin Marston watches from the dunes to the crying gulls described in the novel’s final sentence. Avian imagery in literature is typically associated with freedom or the possibility of freedom, given that birds are creatures of flight and migration whose vocalizations are often interpreted as joyful, hopeful sounds. However, Cleeves inverts these conventions by employing the albatross as a symbol of grief and sorrow—a dead bird whose wings serve only to pull someone else to the ground. In a similar fashion, Cleeves titles the novel itself after “the long call,” or “the cry of a herring gull” which sounds to Matthew like “an inarticulate howl of pain” (6). Matthew’s interpretation of the birds “howling” rather than singing immediately creates a bittersweet emotional landscape for this novel; the image of the long call intermingles beauty and suffering—the possibility of freedom and the reality of pain.

Cleeves ends the novel with a return to seabird imagery. After Matthew and Jonathan agree to invite Matthew’s mother to dinner, “There was a moment of silence. Outside the waves broke on the shore and the gulls cried” (375). In this context, “crying” carries connotations of sorrow and suffering, but there is an element of hope in the fact that Matthew has decided to begin the process of forgiving his mother and bringing her back into his life. Thus, the bird imagery also suggests that Matthew’s decision to pursue forgiveness might allow him to find freedom from his guilt. Cleeves once again uses avian imagery to point to the interdependence of freedom and suffering.