48 pages • 1 hour read
Jane SmileyPerestroika In Paris
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Universal Longing for Freedom and Belonging
This theme drives the narrative, especially through the experiences of the protagonist, Paras. The novel shows that this longing is universal, making it part of the bond between humans and animals and key to the book’s message of mutual respect and understanding. Paras begins the narrative as a racehorse curious about the outside world and what life offers beyond races and victories. A phrase that Smiley regularly applies to Paras is that of a “curious filly,” indicating that she wants to seek new experiences. However, through her curiosity, Paras embodies the universal longing for freedom and belonging. Through her journey, Paras has three primary experiences that mark her journey from unhappy to happy captivity. The first experience is curiosity, the second is friendship, and the final is sacrifice.
Para’s longing for freedom and belonging initially presents itself as curiosity. When Rania leaves her stall open, Paras finds a world of darkness. “She could see now that every stall was empty and dark—in fact, the green of the racecourse was the brightest color around, so bright that, for a moment, she didn’t dare head out there. But Paras was a very curious filly” (4). Her curiosity sparks her desire to find out what else the world offers. In this way, the novel explores the nature of knowledge and understanding in relation to happiness and whether happiness and ignorance can be allies. It also interrogates the ethical question of whether a lack of freedom is permissible simply because the subject doesn’t know any better.
The primary outcome of Paras's pursuit of her freedom is the friendships she makes and this cements the theme’s focus on belonging. Paras meets her first friend quickly after leaving her stall. Smiley introduces the counterfactual, noting that “if the purse had had a zipper Frida would never have been able to open it, and this story would have happened differently” (9). In drawing attention to this, the novel highlights the infinite possibilities that come with freedom. Because Frida can open the purse, she connects with Paras and becomes her first real friend, followed by the intellectual Raoul. As each character enters Paras’s life, she experiences more of the life she missed—even though she returns to the racetrack and her prior life, she does so as a different horse with a new perspective.
The culmination of Paras’s journey arrives when she returns to the racetrack, when she “passed the carousel, turned left, and headed up the dark path beside the great building” (242). The darkness here mirrors the darkness Paras found when leaving her stall. However, whereas Paras was alone when she exited her stall, now she returns with friends. She remains curious and guides her friends to her first safe place—the racetrack—to protect Etienne against the challenges he must face in the aftermath of Madame’s death. Paras sacrifices her freedom to help her friend and is rewarded with a life that combines knowledge and freedom with the security and sense of identity she has as a racehorse.
The Bonds Between Humans and Animals
The novel’s exploration of emotional bonds creates a sympathetic relationship between the animals, between humans and animals, and between humans. Human relationships are shown to be facilitated by animals, often without the humans understanding this. Throughout the novel, Smiley portrays character growth in Sid, trust between Paras and Etienne, and a developing relationship between Pierre and Anais—all of which develop because Paras, the “curious filly,” creates bonds between herself, other animals, and humans.
The novel explores these bonds by creating ripple effects with significant impacts.The most significant display of Paras’s ripple effect on the world around her occurs when she lets out a piercing whinny. The novel describes the characters’ reactions to this in turn, emphasizing the community between them. Kurt “found his fur vibrating and his eyes rolling from the pitch and power of the whinny” (134). In Anais, who misses Paras’s nightly visits, the whinny “aroused [...] a hope that Paras would show up that night or the next night—with her own money, she had bought the horse some flaxseed to mix with her oats” (135). Frida is the only individual unaffected by Paras’s emotions—projected through her whinny. At first, she simply “slowed her trot, but then continued” (135). However, she turns back and the rift between the two animals is repaired as they discuss what happened.
As a result of this, Frida develops the protective bond between herself, Madame, and Etienne, a key bond between humans and animals and a turning point in the book as Frida is representative of animal wariness. Though Frida “still would not go into the house, she treated the boy as her very own human—she wagged her tail when he came out and when he looked out the window” (184). Since Frida’s previous owner, Jacques, died, Frida struggles to trust humans because she feels abandoned. By creating a new bond with Paras, and by extension a new bond with Etienne and Madame, as well as a bond with Raoul who teaches her that Jacques died and did not abandon her, Frida learns to trust humans again.
Finally, Pierre and Anais bond over their mutual interaction with Paras. Since neither sees Paras at the same time, they bond as they:
compare recollections, all the way back to the late fall, when Pierre first noticed the horse’s presence, and then about the feedings, and the raven, and the mysterious whinnies now and then, and Anais reminded him that she hoped that perhaps the filly was the incarnation of some magical being, especially after seeing the raven walk along her spine (251).
Pierre and Anais share their thoughts, beliefs, and dreams about what Paras could be and what they hope would come from their interactions with Paras. Their conversations lead to further discussions and the discovery of a romantic attraction between the two. Without Paras and her bonds with these two separate humans, they would not have found each other—a match they believe to be perfect.
Animals as a Vehicle for Commentary on Human Life
Smiley comments on several human aspects of life by placing them in the eyes of the animals who tell her story, an important part of the novel’s allegorical purpose. The novel especially focuses on the human experience of death and humans’ reliance on rationality and evidence over instinct and belief. The novel shows how humans do and can benefit from animals’ more natural and atavistic approach to life.
The novel explores death through Conrad and Frida—the two animal characters who, in the text, encounter the death of human protectors. When Jacques dies, Frida does not understand what happens. All she sees is that Jacques “didn’t wake up, and here came the gendarmerie, and Frida slipped away. She watched from a distance as they picked him up, put him in a van, and drove him off, and she never understood that” (7). Raoul informs her about the intricacies of death, but to Frida’s mind, Jacques abandons her. Frida’s views about death become a broader discussion about how individuals feel abandoned when someone they love dies. All humans understand death, but no human can adequately explain it. There are always gaps in the explanation that reflect the gaps where the person used to be. Likewise, when Madame dies, Conrad tells Kurt that “[e]very rat has a different theory about human power and mortality, but we all agree on one thing, and that is that when a human vanishes a rat’s world is turned upside down” (233). Though the connection between rats and the humans they live with is not often visible, the connection is there. Likewise, when people die, others who may not be directly connected to the now-deceased person will have their lives affected in unexpected ways because of the new emptiness created.
The novel highlights the importance of natural and emotional grounding over strict rationality, especially through the human characters’ reactions to the magical elements of the book. Anais and Pierre accept Paras’s presence in Paris without question. When Anais first feeds Paras, she
[knows] so little about horses that at first it didn’t occur to her to report the animal. If a horse lived in Paris, and could stroll down the street gazing into shopwindows [...] then that was the horse’s business. Later, though, thinking back on her experience, she thought: if, indeed, it was an actual horse (54).
Rather than consider that Paras is a horse roaming the Paris streets, she begins creating a narrative that Paras is a mythical figure that comes to life. For Anais and many people, believing in an otherworldly explanation is easier because reality is sometimes stranger than fiction. To cope with that strangeness, reality gets blocked by the imagined narrative.
