Elsewhere

Water is one of the most common motifs in all of literature; its necessity to human survival and its cleansing properties tend to be associated with life and purity. The form water takes can also be significant; the vastness of the ocean, for example, can evoke a sense of the mysterious and unknown.

Elsewhere draws on many of these associations at one point or another. Perhaps most obviously, the novel echoes a large body of myth and legend that links water to the boundaries between life and death. As in many cultural traditions, those who have recently died in Elsewhere must cross a body of water—in this case, an ocean—to reach the afterlife. In addition, water is the medium that facilitates communication between Earth and Elsewhere; those seeking to contact their surviving loved ones do so at a location in the ocean known as “the Well,” and speak through whatever source of running water is available on Earth.

Two particular bodies of water hold additional symbolic significance in the novel: the ocean and the River. Both the rise and fall of ocean waves and the sea’s cyclic tides mirror the circular pattern of life and death as Zevin depicts it: growing older, growing younger, and then beginning the process again. This makes the ocean an appropriate vehicle for both the literal process of reincarnation and the figurative rebirth Liz experiences following her first attempt at Release. At the same time, it’s noteworthy that Zevin calls the ocean current via which newborns return to Earth a “river”; unlike a sea, rivers move in only one direction, and thus tend to serve as a metaphor for the passage of time. Taken together, then, Elsewhere’s ocean and River encapsulate the idea that human existence is “like a circle and a line at the same time,” as individuals are born and reborn in a process that extends “indefinitely, infinitely” across time (70).  

References to ancient Egypt appear throughout Elsewhere. The most obvious example is the cruise ship, the SS Nile—an allusion to the famous river along which the ancient Egyptians believed vessels carrying the souls of the deceased would journey. Similarly, each baby sent back to Earth is placed in “the River”—a current revealed by the parting ocean—swaddled in linen bindings that make them look “like a mummy” (217). Even the section titles reinforce the link to ancient Egypt: in addition to “Part I: The Nile,” the novel also includes “Part II: The Book of the Dead” (an Egyptian funerary text), and “Part III: Antique Lands” (an allusion to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias,” which centers on Pharaoh Ramses II, known in Greek as Ozymandias).

In some ways, these references to a long-gone civilization underscore just how strange Elsewhere at first seems to Liz, and how complete a break it represents with her life on Earth. This is certainly the function that the allusion to “Ozymandias” serves when Liz first quotes its opening line. At its heart, the poem is about the vanity and futility of human achievement in the face of mortality; it describes a monument to Ramses II, inscribed with the boast “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”, but the statue has long crumbled and is slowly being buried by the desert sands; it echoes Liz’s sense that her life on Earth was pointless because of the way in which it ended, just as her life on Elsewhere will be. As she says to Betty the night they meet, “[N]othing matters here, does it? I mean, nothing counts. Everything is just erased” (54).

Liz reevaluates her initial impression of Elsewhere (and existence more broadly). For one, she comes to believe that life in Elsewhere is fundamentally no different than life on Earth: “You get older, you get younger, and I'm not sure the difference is as great as I once thought” (266). In this respect, it’s worth noting that the ancient Egyptians conceptualized the afterlife as an extension of earthly life rather than an entirely new kind of existence; just as Elsewhere has its “buildings, houses, stores, roads, cars, bridges, people, trees, flowers, grass, lakes, rivers, beaches, air, stars, and skies” (49), the Egyptian afterlife was full of familiar places, activities, and things. Likewise, the significance of the reference to “Ozymandias” shifts over the course of the novel as Liz comes to accept the transience of life. She lives in “antique lands” in the sense that the existence she has known in Elsewhere will eventually pass away, but by the end of the novel, she no longer sees this as a cause for grief; the end of her life as Liz Hall marks the beginning of her life as someone else.

The stitches Liz received following her accident represent the last link she has to life on Earth. Consequently, she is reluctant to have them removed even after the wound has healed, and she only notices that they’re gone after her dive to the Well: “[S]he can’t even remember the last time she touched them before tonight. They might have been gone for a while (what if they had been the dissolving kind?) and maybe she hadn’t even noticed?” (151). The passage echoes the way people heal after the loss of something or someone important to them—not by accepting the loss all at once, but by a gradual and often imperceptible process. 

Owen’s tattoo—a red heart with “Emily Forever” written inside it—initially seems to be a symbol simply of his love for his wife; he got it at age 16, and because of the reverse aging that takes place in Elsewhere, it has only grown more vivid since his death at 26. Ultimately, however, the word choice proves ironic. Although Owen’s love for Emily is enduring, their relationship is not—nor is the tattoo itself, which vanishes at the age Owen first got it just as Emily leaves him. In this way, the tattoo comes to be a symbol of both love and loss, as well as of the meaning that can be found in what is fleeting and impermanent.