34 pages • 1 hour read
William KennedyIronweed
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
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Themes
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Ghosts
However sane Francis appears on most counts, it’s clear that the ghosts of his past haunt him in a very real way: at one point, he explicitly asks himself “What if nobody sees these bozos but me?” (52); on other occasions, his conversations with these phantoms ends as Rudy responds to something Francis says (apparently out loud) to the ghost. Each ghost constitutes a link between past and present and serves as a catalyst for Francis to reconsider his actions, good or bad. As their numbers mount, so too does Francis’s anguish, which finally reaches a breaking point as the ghosts are constructing bleachers in Annie’s yard, at which point Francis realizes that he has allowed the unreal and the insubstantial to take priority over the real, a mistake he vows to rectify.
Later, Francis witnesses a kind of ghostly representation of the women he has known, which moves him to address not his remorse for his violence, as the earlier apparitions did, but to consider the good things he missed out on doing; notably, Sandra’s ghost testifies to the others of the kindness he extended to her before she died. In the end, the tables are turned when Peggy compares Francis to a ghost come back to haunt his family; his absence has turned him into the very thing he detests. By returning and remaining with his family, he has every chance of becoming a real presence in their lives.
Flowers
Flowers appear in a variety of contexts. First, the title, Ironweed, refers to a type of sunflower named for its particularly rigid stem. The implied comparison between Francis and the flower seems appropriate on two counts: Francis, like the flower, is resilient and capable of snapping into place after withstanding pressure; second, the flower is considered a weed, just as Francis might be viewed as a kind of social weed for his drifting tendencies. Flowers also appear in the cemetery, where Francis’s mother, Kathryn, is described as weaving crosses from “dead dandelions and other weeds,” and then eating them “with an insatiable revulsion” (2), an image that seems to indicate both her religious devotion and the generally deadening effect Francis attributes to her.
Katrina’s grave, meanwhile, is marked by such an “intensity of weed growth” (mostly dandelions) that it becomes an “attraction for cemetery tourists,” suggesting the passion with which she lived (112-13). Hours before she dies, Helen compares herself to a “shapeless, windblown weed blossom of no value to anything, […] for it produces no seed of its own,” even christening it the “Helen blossom” (127). Finally, flowers appear in Annie’s garden, marking it as a place of life and growth. Taken together, these references demonstrate Kennedy’s use of flowers as an apt representation of various subtleties of character.
Names
The use or omission of last names when referring to certain characters acts as a sort of indicator of status or connection. Early on, Rudy asks Helen’s last name, but Francis insists that she doesn’t have one, though he does reveal her last name at Oscar’s bar, and he even includes her middle name when he imagines writing an epitaph over her grave. These changes seem to reflect changes in perceived status or belonging, depending on circumstance; when there is no special occasion, no one to impress, no family to speak of, last names are dropped just as quickly as they are assumed. In severe cases, this loss can even become permanent, as when no one can identify Sandra’s last name after her death. On the other hand, when Rudy dies, Francis reveals his last name as Newton to the nurse, which is the first time it appears in the text, showing that Francis has come to respect Rudy and acknowledge his place in the world.
