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He/him “Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.” — Richard Siken

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I just thought of the scene where Robby laughs at Mohan while she’s having a panic attack and turns to look at Langdon to see if he’s gonna also be amused by it and—

And Langdon not laughing. Langdon, who has a back injury that led to his addiction and tried to confide in Robby about it only for him to tease him, not laughing at Mohan being in a (at least slightly) similarly vulnerable state.

Oh I’m sick.

[extremely-ace]

Haven’t posted in a while, you know what that means…

I’ve been rewatching clips of season one and I feel like people really need to acknowledge how similar Langdon and Mohan are. The parallels between them are actually insane.

For staters, Langdon bouncing during the moment of silence at the beginning of season one and Mohan practically jumping when McKay tells her to go home at the end of season one. Like they look so similar.

And when he’s just standing there outside after Robby yells at him at the end of season one, just like how Mohan stands there in the hall after Santos and Ellis tell her they’re good in their case without her.

I didn’t even notice how many they had until watching season two— the look on Langdon’s face when Robby tells him he doesn’t want him in his ER on the roof compared to the look Mohan gives him and he says “are you having a panic attack because of your mommy issues?” Like oh my god they’re so similar.

The fact that they’re also the most isolated characters. The medical students have each other, to an extent, or Whitaker and Santos, who also have each other. Abbot and Robby (if he was capable of asking for help) and Dana all have each other. The nurses all stick very close, or at least in pairs, most of the time they’re not helping a patient. Garcia and Santos have each other… kinda. McKay has her family. We don’t know a lot about the night shift but we can presume they have their own relationships with each other. When Collins is around she mostly leans on Dana, like Langdon does, but Robby definitely shows her more compassion than he does Langdon or Mohan, even when he’s mad at her.

But Langdon and Mohan have very limited close interactions with… anyone. We can assume he’s still on shaky grounds with his wife (I’m not gonna jump on the “he’s secretly divorced” argument but… you know, they’re probably still working on it) and he even seems more distant from the nurses and students this season (reasonably considering no one visited when he was gone… jeez). He’s got Mel in his corner, but she’s very alone herself and definitely not having a good day. And Mohan really has… well, no one.

They both have the whole thing going on with Robby (which, okay, basically everyone has something going on with Robby right now) and him sorta snapping at both of them.

I mean, I love the show, but I really wish the writers would stop getting rid of characters that could have such interesting dynamics with the others (especially Langdon! He’s worked with Collins and Mohan for seemingly years and we hardly see them having any actual conversations. Like, we see the banter and all, but where’s any of the emotion that we see with the other doctors? With Robby and Abbot? With Santos and Whitaker? With Dana and literally everyone? I appreciate the fun back and forth that he’s got with everyone in the first season, but I wish they’d expand a little more of that, like how we got snippets of Garcia where it’s clear that they both respect and care about each other at least a little.)

Maybe I’m just greedy and want this pathetic guy to have more friends, idk.

[extremely-ace]

One of my favorite parts of House is the dynamics he has with Chase and Thirteen, and how the fandom just collectively agrees (based on canon information) that they have a parental relationship.

I like that it’s specifically Chase and Thirteen that he has this relationship with (we don’t see it with Cameron nor Foreman, or any of the later fellows) because it makes sense. House has a very unprofessional relationship with just about everyone on the show, but these two are the ones with this dynamic.

Thirteen has spent her life keeping secrets, she grew up with her mom sick and her father probably worked a lot or had to take care of her mother in different ways. She didn’t have a confidants, except for maybe her brother (although I don’t remember the canon age difference so… who knows).

But she can’t keep secrets with House. On one of her first days, he discovers her potential Huntington’s. She doesn’t feel the need to hide her sexuality from him. House is someone who, if she doesn’t tell him things, will simply find them out.

My reasoning behind Chase is a little more convoluted (he is my favorite) so… yeah.

Anyway, the reason why Chase’s relationship with House is different from the other fellows is because he just as unprofessional as House. If we’re being honest, I’d say this probably has something to do with his parents not being a very good role models or consistently in his life.

While everyone else at least attempts to remain at a distance from House (save for maybe Wilson) Chase doesn’t.

He’s actually pretty unprofessional with everyone. I mean, he has very few romantic interests that ever get proper screen time, and the ones that do are either patients or his coworkers. In season two, Foreman says that Chase lies to patients because he wants them to like him.

He’s very much a people pleaser, and House might not be the nicest guy around (and we see Chase acknowledge that he doesn’t much like House— but he still sticks around for years.) but he is there. He’s consistently there, and House, while being complex, is a very stagnant character. He gets better, and he gets worse, but (especially in the first three seasons) he always goes back to his baseline.

This is all probably something very familiar to Chase, and arguably I’d say House would remind Chase far more of his mom rather than his dad. But that’s a conversation for a different time.

Anyway, I just thought I’d point this out because it’s very interesting to me.

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This is me admitting I’m an Ogilvie fan… anyway, am I the only one in the Pitt fandom that feels like how the fandom treats Ogilvie vs Mel is rooted in ableism?

I know neither of the characters have explicitly said they’re neurodivergent, but, as an autistic person myself, I definitely thought they both were within episodes of being introduced to them. But even then, they aren’t just their traits, they’re both their own complex characters.

I feel like the fandom really demonizes Ogilvie. It’s clear that he does (and in my opinion it always has been pretty clear) want to help people. His social skills and ability to show empathy (at least outwardly) are definitely not great, but it doesn’t seem like he does or says anything with malicious intent.

He is a very autistic-coded character that still manages to work in a high-stress environment and has successfully been to med school with (to our knowledge) little to no accommodations in his everyday life.

I feel it’s very often that when people see low support needs autistic people, or just ones who appear to need less accommodations than others, they tend to either infantilize or demonize them. This is usually due to a lack of understanding, but it’s still a very harmful thing.

Mel (and this probably also has something to do with her being a woman, if we’re being honest) on the other hand is very often infantilized by the fandom. Autistic people are often generalized as being asexual or aromantic (and whilst an increased number are, compared to neurotypical people, it’s still a harmful thing to assume) and that’s not always the case.

It’s part of the reason I’m so happy with how they’ve chosen to characterize Becca on the show, that while she may need help, she can still make her own decisions (while communicating with her therapist) without always going to her sister/caregiver.

Just because Mel comes off as autistic doesn’t mean she’s automatically pure. While I personally don’t ship Kingdon, nor do I think it is really in character for either of them, I feel it does a disservice to the complexity of all the characters to simply say that Mel could never do something like that (or that she is oblivious to to romantic advances on her because… well she’s just not.) Mel basically tells us that the only reason she hasn’t been in any romantic/sexual relationships is because she hasn’t had time or energy, not for a lack of desire.

She is still a grown woman who can make her own choices.

Neurodivergent people are allowed to be complicated, they are allowed to be messy, and they can be good people or bad people— they can be good AND bad. It just annoys me that I’ve found a show with such good representation but a large portion of the fandom is unable to accept that all the characters are flawed and complex.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just reading too much into all of this.

[extremely-ace]

I know I don’t really make shippy posts, but it’s actually impossible for me to look at Bunny and Henry and see a platonic relationship.

Ignoring all the other stuff: like how Bunny switched his major for him, or all the Francis/Charles and Henry/Bunny parallels, or all the whole part where the have matching glasses, or the part when Richard debates for an entire paragraph whether Henry would’ve come onto Bunny on their Rome trip, or the part where Bunny draws the two of them together and Henry says he draws well, or even the part where it says “…but though Henry complained about this he seemed oddly incapable of refusing him.” And I get that last part is all about the blackmailing stuff, but still.

But even after all that, what really gets me is the parallels between how Marion treats Bunny and how Henry treats Bunny.

This is something that stuck out to me as soon as I read it, because it’s so blatant to me, but maybe I’m just overthinking it.

Marion is described as “very bossy and businesslike, treating [Bunny] in much the same way she handled kindergarten pupils.” And about twenty pages before this, after Bunny tries to trap Richard with the bill and has to call Henry, it says “Henry paid the check while Bunny hung behind him like a bad child.”

The scene where Bunny comes to hide in Richard’s room whenever he was arguing with Marion, compared to him showing up at Richard’s when he was drunk to confess about Henry and the murder… hm…

She’s learning to be a teacher and the line where Richard writes “I had always pictured Henry teaching Greek…”

Bunny calling Henry (and Richard but shh) “old man” and Marion “old gal”.

Both Marion and Henry calling each other after Bunny’s death (okay I know Henry’s doing it because he knows what happened and all but… still it gets me… yes when her boyfriend skipped date night she knew he was with his boyfriend..)

This one is a stretch but when Richard describes himself seeing Henry and Marion (before he actually knows them) he sees both of them with Bunny.

[extremely-ace]

This is just something I had to point out, but the funeral scene on page 419 with Richard saying, “Was this all there was to it? To get rid of him like a piece of garbage?” Really hit me on page 519 (only just now realizing it’s exactly a hundred pages later, woah) when it says that the only thing Julian left, besides the curtains, was a tacked-up Japanese print that Bunny had given him.

Bro Julian is literally leaving him behind like garbage I’m sick

[extremely-ace]

One of my favorite things of TSH is that none of the characters are consistent, and it’s definitely done on purpose. I feel like the two explanations to this are either:

A) that Richard just… doesn’t really understand anyone in the Greek class and therefore tells us contrasting information.

Or B) that these characters, like real people, exist in sometimes opposing ways. People are complicated, sometimes they don’t make sense. And sometimes people change, too.

And this is true for all the characters, consistently.

1) Charles is a sorta special case, because I feel like his, rather than being traits of a complex person or Richard’s mischaracterization, is simply how he changes.

When we first meet Charles, Richard describes him as “nice” (in this same scene Judy Poovey disagrees and I guess you could choose to trust her judgement more). But really the part that made me want to write this out is on page 100, when Charles says he’s afraid to hurt Camilla even though she’s already hurt.

I feel like this scene already highlights the roles of everyone in the Greek class, or at least the roles Richard assigns to them. Henry is written as the savior, a hero, while Camilla is in need of saving. Bunny is absent, Richard is more a bystander than anything, and Francis is, for lack of a better word, useless in the face if danger. These roles are all repeated in the final scene of book 2, except for Charles’s role.

Charles goes from being a sweet, empathetic person (at least to Camilla) to being violent and impulsive.

2) Camilla is also a special case (really, this rule applies to all of them in different ways). I do believe that this one more so lies on how Richard himself views her rather than any intense character development, but she could also just possess these opposite qualities.

For one, Richard describes Camilla and Charles as “very much alike” (as does some of the other Greek class) but then the Agent on page 376 says that the don’t look all that alike “there’s a family resemblance, but your hair’s not even quite the same color.”

For two, Camilla is often described as “boyish” by Richard (ignoring the queer subtext of that for now) but he also gives a whole paragraph on page 224 about how she’s still girly… right. “She was still a girl, a slightly lovely girl…”

For three, and this is going back to the scene on page 100 and the end of book 2, she’s drawn as someone who needs protecting, almost like a damsel that needs Henry to save her. But, she’s also described as just as competent as Henry, and often times it seems like she cares far less about morality and their actions than anyone else, even Henry. I personally like to think of this part as a deliberate action of hers because, really, she’s described as someone with a very fawning reaction (Francis practically gives a speech about how she leads everyone on… which is probably som type of trauma response, but I won’t comment considering we don’t know the exact details of the twins’ relationship pre-canon.) I do think that she’s probably the best manipulator out of all of them, not that it makes her the villain or anything, but definitely that she was using the others for her own benefit and safety at times.

3) Francis is the first one I noticed in this light, because his is the most deliberate. He might be the only one I’m not connecting back to the same two scenes though.

I feel like this one is definitely just Richard misunderstanding him more than anything, because no one else really describes Francis like Richard.

On page 218, before describing Bunny’s homophobia towards Francis, he says, “…I was perfectly comfortable being alone with him even in the most questionable situations— drunk, or in his apartment, or even wedged into the back seat of a car.”

And he says this even though Francis is revealed to be very predatory. (I’m not gonna go on about Francis hitting on Richard when the first met, or making a pass at him on the boat, because those aren’t outright bad on their own.) But I will add the specific line that Francis says, “It shouldn’t surprise you. If you drank as much as [Charles] does, I dare say I would have been to bed with you, too.” And the whole scene on page 289…

But also, on page 291, Richard goes back to (as he did at the very beginning) describing Francis as respectable and cool, well-mannered, when we know that he, out of everyone, is probably the least. At least here Richard fully acknowledges it as an illusion though.

4) I saved Henry for last because I feel too complicated about him. But I think this most applies to him.

Henry is described as almost inhuman— he laughs when Richard discovers the murder, he’s painted as the hero in the scenes on pages 100 and the end of book 2, he seems unfazed by most modern morality. But he’s just… not.

More than being the first person in the isolating Greek class, he’s also a young adult who spent his entire life isolated. This is shown in the scenes when he has no idea about the moon landing, or how much TVs cost. Julian is the closest thing he has to a decent father (very questionable title of “decent”) and Henry reveals as much when he says, “I loved him more than my own father. I loved him more than anyone in the world.”

In that whole scene, actually, he’s rather emotional, and Richard straight up writes, “I never could get used to seeing him without them, that naked, vulnerable look he always had.”

And even towards the beginning, Richard describes how shaken Henry was after accidentally killing a duck.

It’s clear that Henry definitely isn’t as cold and calculating and inhuman as Richard constantly describes him as— if fact, I’d argue that out of everyone, that description least fits Henry. But that’s an argument for another day.

5) I saved Bunny for very last because he just… doesn’t really fit this. I’ve talked about the whole Sin and morality thing with him about a million times already, but aside from that he’s really not described all that contrastingly.

This is all way longer than I intended it to be sorry guys.

[extremely-ace]

I don’t have my copy of TSH with me so if I’m remembering any of this wrong then… well whoops

Anyway, I find it really interesting how Bunny treats everyone after he finds out about the murder.

Firstly, Richard (and this one is really interesting, because he doesn’t even know that Richard knows about it). Personally, I don’t think he really was being any more rude to Richard than normal. Maybe Richard thought he was, or maybe he was lashing out, but it really doesn’t feel like Bunny would intentionally be a jerk to Richard because he was mad about something that had absolutely nothing to do with him.

Anyway, when he is being rude to Richard, it’s always about his family relationships (which Bunny also isn’t the best with, we all seen how dysfunctional his family was when the Greek class stayed with them) and his poorness (while Bunny himself is poor, but I guess you could interpret that he doesn’t really make fun of Richard for being poor, if anything he makes fun of him for lying about it, or maybe it’s some dig at him because Bunny assumes that Richard must have some self worth issue for not advocating for himself more? Like, arguably Richard sorta does, because he’s friends with a bunch of rich people and still gets too embarrassed to ask for help.)

Secondly, Camilla. It says that he originally acts sexist to try to upset Camilla, but when that doesn’t work, he says she has no place in the class because she wouldn’t make it as a classicist or whatever, and this really gets me because… like, Bunny is only pointing out bad things that also apply to him. Camilla isn’t lazy or “unscholarly” by any means, but Bunny himself is. And then he finally implies her relationship with Charles to upset her, and it finally works, but this is just a fact. He’s just pointing out true things that he dislikes or views as wrong, and those are the ones that actually hurt her. I think this also probably says something about Camilla but… moving on.

Thirdly, Charles. What Bunny does to upset Charles is two things— originally, he says bad things/makes jokes about Catholics, which is sorta interesting to me because whilst Bunny is arguably the least religious, he’s the most moral out of all of them, especially towards the end, even though he says he associates things like morality and Sin with Catholics. But, the second thing he does is call Charles an alcoholic which… yes, also true. But that last part really gets me because, aside from maybe Richard, Bunny is the one who goes to parties the most… the college parties that the only snippets we get of are when Richard is doing drugs… like okay. But also because Bunny is remembered, after his death, as an alcoholic… okay…

This all leads me to my real point; that out of everything Bunny could’ve done to Francis (seriously, it’s really easy to come up with things about Francis, even ones that also apply to Bunny, like his laziness or shallowness, or his hypochondria, or just about anything) he decides to make fun of him for being gay.

Like.. he makes fun of Richard for being poor, something that also applies to him that he doesn’t want people to know, and Camilla for being lazy, something that applies to him, and Charles for all of that, which I don’t want to write again. And all this just makes me think that it’s also why he chooses to make fun of Francis for being gay, because it’s a trait that also applies to him that he doesn’t want people to know.

Anyway, this was the thing that really made me think Bunny was queer when I read this book.

[extremely-ace]

All my posts so far have been about TSH but I’m coming out as a Pitt fan… I haven’t seen the first season in, like, six months so sorry for any inaccuracies. But these are just things that stuck out to me.

Firstly, Robby telling everybody inside exactly what Langdon, still outside, wants to hear after he told him the opposite…

“I can’t tell you how proud I am of all of you.” And “You let me down! You let everybody down, especially yourself!”

“This place will break your heart.” And “This job will fuck you up if you let it. You let it.”

“Thank you.” And “Fuck you.”

Secondly, would it be crazy to compare Robby & Langdon’s teaching methods?

The way Robby yells at Langdon paralleling how Langdon “teaches” Santos… but the way Robby treats Collins (moving to a private area and sitting next to her, having an open conversation) reflecting how Langdon treats Mel… hm… I understand the difference in situations of course, but I find it very interesting how Langdon immediately moves to praise Mel just like Robby does, for the same reasons Robby does.

Thirdly, and this might be pushing it, but Robby and Langdon parallels in the first episodes of both seasons.

Robby walking in and taking off his sunglasses in episode one, openly integrating into the environment, while Langdon keeps his hat on to hide himself. Robby immediately looking for the picture of Adamson, while Langdon goes inside immediately looking for Robby??

Yes, I’m very normal about The Pitt… yes…

[extremely-ace]

I haven’t seen anyone comment on how many Bunny & Charles parallels there are in The Secret History…

Them both being the first ones to actively go against Henry— Bunny for the Battenkill murder and Charles for Bunny’s murder. Both for what we can assume are moral reasons, at least to an extent. While everyone claims that Bunny’s disagreement with the murder has nothing to do with the actual immorality of it all, it always appears that he does, especially with the whole scene where Julian says that Bunny’s been questioning him about Sin and Forgiveness, and that he thinks he’s going to go to church, when Bunny has stated to be one of if not the least religious out of the whole group.

Dare I compare the desperation and borderline insanity of Bunny and Charles towards the end (if we believe that the written note actually was from Bunny, because I’ve seen people argue it’s not and it’s actually a pretty convincing argument). Both of them thinking that Henry was going to kill them, both of them trying their hardest to live (Bunny being found with dirt under his nails because he was grabbing at everything while he fell; Charles trying to kill Henry).

Francis calling Charles an old friend just like how Charles (and Henry himself) described Bunny/Henry… okay… (pages 192, 62, and 457)

Also Camilla saying she knows Charles better than anyone just like how Henry says he knows Bunny better than anyone. (Pages 484 & 192)

Charles, after everything happens with Bunny and Camilla, bursting into rooms without knocking just like Bunny used to. (Pages 515 & 455)

Charles falling away from the intellectual/academic aesthetic they all have going on, the one that Bunny never fit, after everything happens. Especially on page 520 when he’s yelling at Henry…

Henry pointing out the he wouldn’t use the word “kidnap” when talking about Charles, just like he said the whole “I prefer to think of it as a redistribution of matter” when discussing Bunny.

At the end, Marion marrying Bunny’s brother (who looks just like him) and Francis marrying a blue-eyed blonde (just like Charles).

These are only the ones I can remember off the top of my head, but I find it very interesting!

[extremely-ace]

I know most of my posts so far come off as thoughtful and interesting, like all fancy with a lot of effort put into them.

But I just wanna say that I totally think Bunny is the type of guy to lick the insides of popcorn bags once he’s finished them to get the butter. He finishes a bag of pretzels and tips the bag so that all the salt spills out into his mouth. He finishes eating pickles and drinks the juice.

Yes I’m projecting here.

[kindofwriter]

I wake up, I spend 16 hours thinking about Marion specialising in working with children with learning disabilities so she can make sure they get the care and support and attention Bunny never got, I go back to sleep

[extremely-ace]

Would it be crazy if I said that out of all The Secret History characters, Bunny & Camilla’s relationship intrigues me the most?

Like, say what you will about Bunny, he’s the only one in the Greek class that doesn’t have any type of romantic interest in her. We know that Richard loves her, that Henry appears to as well, everything that happens between her and Charles, and even that her and Francis did something. And that’s excluding the bacchanal.

And this is mentioned multiple times.

On page 457 & 458, Francis says, “Bunny wouldn’t go near Camilla, you know, he would hardly even look at her. He used to say that she wasn’t his type…”

On page 226, he says, “You couldn’t pay me to sleep with you, girlie.”

But, really, even beyond that, these two have such an interesting dynamic that we never really see.

On page 39, it’s the two of them that say the whole “to live” & “to live forever” lines.

On page 57, he agrees that she’s pretty, smart, and lovely. Actually, he compares her to Diana, and this part really gets me because come on, it’s Diana. The goddess whose symbols are deer, the moon, and hunting. But most of all, it really gets me because she’s a virgin goddess.

On page 100, it’s said that he went with her to the emergency room.

On page 224, when discussing Bunny’s misogyny, it says, “With Camilla he was forced to assume a slightly more paterntalistic stance, beaming down at her with the condescension of an old papa toward a dimwit child.”

On page 268, right before they kill him, she says, “Hi, Bun.” And he says, “Hi yourself.” And this line just really kills me. It’s silly, but it’s just so shocking to me how friendly they all seem right before everything.

On page 359, she mentions burying Bunny, and I know she says it in a way to imply that it’s just because she thinks it’s bad luck, but I always think about how she’s the only one who cared if he had a proper burial.

On page 375, when they talk to the agents about Bunny, she cries, and she could just be faking to avoid suspicion but… I mean… it still gets me… I am nothing if not delusional.

But the part that most of all tempted me to rethink them is because of page 452, when she says, “Hi, you.” And Richard says, “Hi yourself.” Just like she and Bunny did. And then she says, “In the closet there’s a scarf [Bunny] left the last time he was here. I keep running across it. It still smells like him.”

They just fascinate me so much. Please tell me more about them. Please give Camilla one friend that doesn’t sexualize her (as much as everyone else at least)… please…

[extremely-ace]

The worst part about reading books is that I always latch onto one character. Like, I read TSH and as soon as I finished I made a Pinterest board and Spotify playlist for Bunny.

Anyway, definitely don’t listen to The Great Divide by Noah Kahan and imagine it from the perspective of the Greek class after they kill Bunny.

And also don’t listen to Doomsday by Lizzy McAlpine (specifically the part towards the end that goes “the death of me was so quiet. No friends and family allowed. Only my murderer, you..”) as Henry, a pallbearer, wiping the dirt onto his suit after sprinkling it over the casket.

And also don’t listen to Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call by Bleachers and think of him… no don’t…

And really, really, don’t listen to Jus’ Tired by Car Seat Headrest and think about Bunny falling asleep in Henry’s bed crying after they fought… haha… don’t think about that at all…

[extremely-ace]

I feel like I never see people talk about how much plant/animal symbolism there is in TSH, but it actually might’ve been my favorite thing when reading it.

My favorite one was probably the wasps. Very early on, we see Richard describing the wasps at Hampden, and later on one reappears at Bunny’s funeral, where Charles kills it. After that moment, wasps aren’t mentioned again. However, bees are. Wasps, that symbolize chaos and territoriality are replaced by bees, that symbolize purity and community. It feels to me as thought the act of killing the wasp is just like the act of killing Bunny, it allows Richard to finally feel like he belongs.

I have seen people talk about the ferns. Before they kill Bunny, Henry says they’re looking for ferns, and Mrs. Corcoran receives pots of them before the funeral. Ferns symbolize everlasting youth, and new beginnings. The specific ferns that Henry gets after they kill Bunny, Spleenwort, symbolize growth and resilience.

The African Violets that are practically dead, according to Mrs. Corcoran, represents loyalty. They’re common Mother’s Day gifts. I find this really interesting specifically because they’re dying. Something about Mrs. Corcoran feeling ashamed of how she thinks Bunny died.

The Lyceum, where Julian’s office is, is covered by ivy (eternity, enduring love, and a protective, creeping attachment).

The birch tree that Richard first sees symbolizes new beginnings and purification (only a few pages after Richard says he feels like his existence is tainted).

The postcard that Richard sends to his mother after his first class with Julian has “fiery maples” on it, a symbol of wisdom and transformation.

At Bunny’s funeral, there’s Gladiola (remembrance, but also moral integrity), chrysanthemum (longevity), and palm (victory, peace, resilience). Mrs. Corcoran has a bouquet of rosebuds (youth, purity, new beginnings). Richard also mentions crows (death, wisdom) and beetles (transformation, cycle of life).

After the funeral, in Richard’s dream, he mentions hydrangea (purity and innocence, they’re popular at weddings, which gets me because they’ve just been to a funeral, arguably the opposite) and evergreens (immortality, life triumphing death).

When returning to Hampden, he describes honeysuckle (nostalgic memories, intertwined bonds) and lilac (renewal). Henry puts peonies in Julian’s office, symbols of the fleeting nature of life.

I could go on about Henry’s garden, but that’d take forever. But I will say that he mentions getting rid of spider mites, which symbolize hidden, creeping destruction (this reminds me of the ivy outside Julian’s office).

The black flies after Richard bails Charles out of jail symbolize sin and impurity. The flowers Richard and Francis bring Charles in the hospital symbolize new beginnings. When the return to Francis’s country home, it mentions bees again, and lilac (nostalgia).