Eternal

“He couldn’t read as well as his classmates, but now he knew he possessed native intelligence, as he was descended from these ancients. He was a son of Lazio. Of Roma. And he stood tall, bathing in the moonglow, for a very long time.”

As Marco thinks about his inability to read and write legibly, he explores the excavation of ruins near a Roman forum, connecting with his Roman ancestors. He describes himself as a metaphorical son of Rome (and Lazio, the Italian state in which Rome is located). The use of “bathing” indicates a quasi-baptism, as he falls in with Fascist men who share his fascination with ancient Rome.

“A burden lifted from her shoulders, one she hadn’t realized she had been carrying, and it felt good to let it go.”

After Marco convinces Elisabetta to ride on his bicycle with him, she considers the air sweeping past her. Describing her responsibilities as a sole breadwinner, she compares them to a physical burden that presses down on her.

“Piazza Navona was alive with a nighttime crowd, bigger than in Trastevere.”

Approaching Palazzo Braschi, the headquarters of the Italian Fascist Party, Elisabetta observes the crowds of Piazza Navona, which still retains the shape of the Roman stadium it covers. Piazza Navona becomes personified, a grand, living being opposed to the quiet of her neighborhood.

“She simply put her mouth on Marco’s, and his mouth felt suddenly like her own, warm and soft and slightly open, so that she could inhale his very breath.”

In Palazzo Braschi, Elisabetta kisses Marco, compelled by his transformation and not yet understanding his descent into Fascism. Comparing his mouth to her own, she describes them as similar, joined as one—when in reality, she and Sandro are more intellectually compatible.

“Emedio listened, his expression typically attentive, and when Marco was finished, he looked directly into his brother’s large, dark eyes, which were so much like their father’s.”

After Elisabetta’s father sends Marco away, due to Marco’s father’s affair with Elisabetta’s mother, Marco questions his brother about the truth. Emedio links his brother and father through their eyes, reflecting their similar desire—one for Elisabetta and the other for her mother Serafina—and their initial support of Fascism.

“The afternoon sun beat down, dry and oppressive, and Elisabetta wilted at her father’s graveside, while the local priest conducted the service.”

As Elisabetta attends her father’s funeral, she feels the full power of the sun. The descriptions of the sun’s heat and violence, coupled with the image of Elisabetta wilting, likens her to a flower, which grows small under the weight of loss.

“The only problem was that Marco had an iron stomach, so it would require a lot to get him sick, and Aldo didn’t want his little brother to end up in the hospital across the street.”

As Aldo considers ways to save Marco from the anti-Fascists’ plan to murder the men at Commendatore Spada’s retirement, he ponders using poison. Using figurative language, he describes his brother’s stomach as made of metal, suggesting he doesn’t get sick easily. Despite Aldo and Marco’s differences, Aldo is very much an older brother, who feels torn between family and morality.

“The pain was agonizing. He hurt everywhere. He felt warmth all over his face. He knew it was his own blood. He opened his eyes with effort. Above him loomed a line of dark silhouettes, brandishing long clubs.”

Caught on his way to pick up guns in Orvieto, Aldo catalogues his attack by secret police. As he looks at his attackers, Fascist men, he compares them to shadows, highlighting their dark nature and lack of definition—indistinguishable from each other in their violence.

“He eyed her through the loupe, and her face stared back at him, spooky in the obverse, as if her head were a skull. He knew once he identified her, she would be arrested and beaten for information.”

Marco looks at the photo of the blonde woman who appeared in his father’s cafe, speaking to Aldo before secret police killed him. Using a magnification device, he enlarges the photo, seeing her face as a skull. This image foreshadows her fate once Marco gives his boss her picture—and marks his shift as someone who prioritizes his position over human lives.

“Elisabetta blinked, shocked. Her heart leapt to her throat. She hadn’t seen this coming.”

When Marco proposes to Elisabetta, she is genuinely surprised despite their bond—likely due to her bond with Sandro, her intellectual match. An example of figurative language, her heart leaps into her throat, suggesting discomfort.

“It terrified him to think that the three of them were sliding toward war, into the gaping maw of a monster that could swallow them whole, like Jonah into the whale.”

As Marco and Sandro meet on the eve of Italy declaring war on the Allies, Sandro imagines war as a monster that will destroy them. He compares this fate to Jonah, the biblical prophet who defies God and his mission to warn of Nineveh’s destruction, punished by a whale swallowing him whole. Nineveh avoids destruction, but bends to God’s will, foreshadowing Rome’s near destruction by Allied bombing and Nazi occupation.

“Elisabetta descended the stairs, trailing a beautiful fragrance, and Sandro followed her, his heart aching. It killed him to see her again, and the emotions he had been suppressing for so long rushed back to him.”

When Elisabetta finds out Sandro was the one who gifted her birthday notebook, not Marco, she rushes to see him. Her appearance at his door reignites his feelings, his heartache. She kills him figuratively, because he feels he has no future with her due to parental disapproval and race laws.

“He had loved Elisabetta and Sandro both, so much. He had trusted them both, without question. Their betrayal stabbed like a knife.”

When Marco sees Elisabetta and Sandro alone together, he assumes they have been seeing each other behind his back. He compares the supposed betrayal to physical violence, ironic considering he dismissed the real violence inflicted on his brother Aldo by Fascist men and proceeds to call Sandro an antisemitic slur.

“No. We must lift our gaze from our own plates. A community is comprised of people, all of its people.”

At a meeting with other Trastevere merchants, Nonna challenges one’s decision to bar Jewish customers. Invoking community and the people who represent it, she uses a metaphor associated with food, befitting her role as pasta maker, to encourage others to consider others. Plates thus become a metaphor for choices and survival.

“There have always been anti-Semites, as there have always been fleas.”

Nonna consoles Elisabetta, who is upset over the other Trastevere merchants’ antisemitism. She compares this sentiment to fleas, a nuisance, but only truly harmful in numbers. This metaphor reverses the antisemitic framing of Jewish people as vermin, instead framing those who engage in antisemitism as an infestation, one that fuels hatred and violence.

“And when she had gotten to the middle of the novel, she had found herself writing about an angel who appeared from nowhere, which was strange because Elisabetta hadn’t intended to have any magical elements in her book.”

Elisabetta describes the novel she has written at the behest of Nonna and Sandro. The autobiographical A Talkative Girl includes an angel, who represents Nonna, her mother figure. As Elisabetta finishes her novel, Nonna dies downstairs, her angelic counterpart foreshadowing the death—and continued influence after death through teachings.

“He had become his uniform, and now, he was disgusted with himself.”

As Marco walks along the familiar Tiber River with his Nazi friend Rolf, he sees Sandro, thin and working on the banks. Marco realizes his uniform has become more than clothing, but his whole identity. The uniform functions as a metonym for the Fascist Party, their dehumanizing rhetoric and violence.

“They had hardly spoken to each other in so long, but he let his legs carry him down the hill, like a car running out of fuel.”

As the Allies invade Sicily and the end of the war approaches, the Fascist Party’s hold over Marco breaks, and he runs to embrace his father. This movement is equated to a car without gas, the simile reinforcing his metaphorical emptiness.

“The beautiful synagogue embodied the peace that Sandro had newly found in Judaism like a healing salve.”

Sandro describes the synagogue in the Ghetto, linking it to his renewed faith in religion. In the face of war, the synagogue, a place of community, is framed as a balm for various wounds—be it the loss of loved ones or working together to gather a required toll under pressure.

“They grew deathly quiet. Their expressions fell into tense and drawn lines. The lethal deadline hung over them all.”

As the stream of families donating gold for the Nazis’ toll slows, the Simones despair. Using imagery that recalls death, from silence to the deadline itself, this quote foreshadows the fate of the Simones—except Rosa, who survives with the help of the local hospital.

“A bower of ivy hung overhead, a sole survivor that needed no care and therefore got none. Like him.”

As Sandro walks near Elisabetta’s house, he sees ivy growing above him. He sees himself in the plant, enduring and surviving destruction. This comparison echoes Elisabetta’s herbs and vegetables, grown in Nonna’s tureens, other symbols of resilience.

“Nazis loaded families like cattle.”

Nazis round up Jewish residents of the Ghetto for deportation, loading them into vehicles. The equation of them to cattle reinforces the depth of their dehumanization and foreshadows most of their deaths in labor camps.

“Elisabetta slept like a baby, dreaming that she and Sandro were getting married.”

After having sex with Sandro for the first and last time, Elisabetta sleeps serenely. This quote hints at her future pregnancy, with young Sandro being the last living remnant of Sandro.