67 pages • 2 hours read
Ross GayThe Book of Delights
Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Gardening
Throughout his essays, Gay uses gardening and nature to symbolize many different aspects of life. In “‘Joy is Such a Human Madness:’ The Duff Between Us,” Gay uses fungal duff that transports nutrients from healthy trees to weak trees as a representation of how joy is the underground connection between humans. Similarly, Gay uses fig cuttings in “Transplanting” to represent how sometimes things must be cut down to be replanted and bloom again. He uses the way the amaranth flower spreads seeds as a symbol of exponential growth and gratitude. Gardening is a large part of Gay’s life, and he often returns to his garden to enjoy the beauty of the world around him and connect to himself and the earth.
How Perspectives Change as One Grows Older
How perspectives change as one grows older is a motif that appears in many of Gay’s essays. Gay frequently writes nostalgically about his childhood and traces many of his beliefs to the ways his parents taught him to view the world. In “My Birthday, Kinda” and “Infinity,” Gay remembers stereotypes he was taught about bright colors and what masculinity is supposed to look like. He also remembers how his childhood self kept a wallet he found on the sidewalk and reflects on the fact that as an adult, he would work hard to return the wallet to its original owner because of his faith in common decency.
He also recalls the way he was taught about race, even when he didn’t understand it, in “Ambiguous Signage Sometimes.” In that essay, he didn’t understand why his father corrected him so frequently, but as an adult, he can recognize how his father was trying to protect and prepare him for the higher standards Gay would need to reach simply to be considered at the same level as a white man. In this instance, the motif helps explain the theme of Gay’s Experience as a Black Man in the United States. Other essays support the theme of the symbiotic relationship between grief and joy. For example, in “Scat,” Gay remembers his childhood terror at the movie The Exorcist and shares how delighted he was to rewrite that fear as an adult. Without the grief that accompanied his childhood fear, he would not have experienced the delight of laughing at the movie later in life.
How the Understanding of Death Changes the Way One Lives
Gay frequently touches on how the understanding of death changes how one lives. This motif supports the theme of The Symbiotic Relationship Between Grief and Joy. He celebrates the beauty of humanity in “Fishing an Eyelash: two or Three Cents on the Virtue of Poetry Readings,” writing about how books never die, but books can never communicate the way a living body can. Something instantaneous can never be re-experienced, which makes it more special. Because of the imminence of death, Gay is eager to live fully and enjoy his life. In “Joy is Such a Human Madness,” he writes about a dream in which:
[He] had the stark and luminous and devastating realization—in that clear way, not that oh yeah way—that my life would end. I wept in the line watching people go by with their carts, watching the cashier move items over the scanner, feeling such an absolute love for this life (47).
He celebrates death as the instigation for people to love radically. Death inevitably carries grief because it entails separation from those one loves. However, Gay finds joy in the fact that he can still live with and enjoy those he loves, recognizing that their time together is limited.
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By Ross Gay
