Daytripper

The typewriter is a symbol used throughout the text to connote not only writing, but the life-cycle of fathers and sons. Benedito, Brás’s father, uses a typewriter to write his own books. The image of the typewriter is loaded for Brás, however, since he fears never being able to live up to his father’s standards. After Benedito’s death, the typewriter stands in as a reminder of his presence in Brás’s life.

The typewriter also symbolizes Brás’s desire to write his own destiny and create a meaningful, passionate life. Throughout Daytripper, he struggles to make decisions and choices, fearing he will choose the wrong thing. Brás is confronted by Iemanjá in his dreams, reminding him that if he does not make choices for himself soon, choices will begin to slip away.

The typewriter—a symbol of agency and creativity for both father and son—empowers him to make choices, achieve his dreams, and make a meaningful life for himself and his family. He sees the typewriter at the end of Chapter 9 when it appears on the beach, reminding him that he has the power of choice. He can still make a choice about how he wants his life story to end.

Iemanjá is a goddess of the sea in the Brazilian Candomblé religion (which is a mixture of Indigenous, Roman Catholic, and African religious traditions). She appears as a mysterious and magical woman in Brás’s dreams in a boat on the ocean, always surrounded by flowers and offerings. She typically arrives when he needs to make a big decision in his life, or when he is about to encounter a life-changing moment. Iemanjá’s presence adds a sense of surreal gravity to these vital moments in Brás’s life and prompts him to consider the choices he is about to make.

Brás receiving visions from Iemanjá is significant because she both reveals his subconscious as well as a larger, more fated plan for his life. He receives these visions on the ocean, playing with the idea that water can be a symbol for the subconscious. Brás often finds himself on the water, or on the beach, during pivotal moments which suggests he is trying to navigate his innermost desires. Rather than telling him what Brás should do, Iemanjá gives guidance without any answers. This means that he makes his own destiny, and that his fate is meant to be written solely by him. Without a divine plan, Brás is allowed to determine and write his own life story.

Kites symbolize Brás’s childhood and innocence. This image plays a particularly important role in Chapter 5, which focuses on Brás’s youth. The kite is an object that flies and moves with the wind, conjuring ideas about freedom, possibility, and dreams for the future. At the end of Chapter 5, young Brás dies from electrocution when he flies his kite into an exposed telephone wire. This occurs right as he starts to lose his own innocence as he has his first kiss and learns that the adults in his life were once children themselves. No longer able to fly freely in the wind, and devoid of the superpowers he felt his birth story must have granted him, Brás’s new knowledge about growing up muddies his sense of self. His death by electrocution symbolizes the death of his childhood and a specific form of his own innocence.

As an adult, Brás is forced to go to the scene of an airplane explosion and report on the victims of the tragedy. The event rattles him and forces him to challenge himself as a writer, a friend, a husband, and a father. Airplanes, yet another form of flight not unlike a kite, typically remind Brás after the crash that life is short, precious, and not always promised.

Moon and Bá bring the image of the kite and airplane back several times throughout the book, particularly in Brás’s dream sequences. The kite is meant to remind him of his youth and the feeling of freedom and limitlessness he felt as a child, while the airplane symbolizes the fragility of human life. As an adult, Brás feels far more restricted in the choices and paths he can take. Remembering the kite and the airplane serve as balanced reminders that he is never limited to just one life path or one choice—in fact, in some ways he is still just as free, and as fragile, as he was as a child.