46 pages • 1 hour read
Mitch AlbomFor One More Day
Fiction | Novel | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Food
Food appears in connection with many of the book’s key themes. The three appointments that Chick accompanies his mother to are paralleled by three nourishing meals, and the meals themselves call up powerful memories of his past. The food itself is a part of his healing process on both a physical and emotional level. As he eats, he realizes that he has not had a nourishing meal in days, and he remembers a time when these meals were a given, though he took them for granted.
Food binds Chick to his mother in other instances as well; nowhere is this more evident than in Chapter 7, when his father successfully pressures him to agree with him that his mother’s baked ziti is inedible. The sense of guilt that Chick feels immediately afterward shows how deeply his mother’s love is connected to her role as a provider. Later, when Chick learns of his father’s second wife, this episode takes on a deeper meaning. His father’s rejection of his mother’s food shadows a deeper and more complete rejection of her as a wife, in favor of his other wife.
Music
Music appears fairly rarely in the book, but it connects the characters’ experiences across time and space. The first significant appearance of music occurs in Chick’s memory of his mother singing “This Could Be the Start of Something Big.” Though she loves big band music, this song in particular sticks in Chick’s memory of a time when his family life was relatively harmonious, and his mother was happy.
The song comes back later in the story, when Chick gives an impromptu performance at a party in college. Though the song itself is distinctly old-fashioned, Chick wins his audience over with his enthusiasm and showmanship. The song’s connection with family love is strengthened by the fact that Chick meets and falls in love with one girl, Catherine, in the audience, who will become his wife.
Finally, his mother is listening to big band music on the radio when she has a heart attack, one last ironic appearance of this symbol of family love and happiness.
Mothers and Motherhood
Mothers and motherhood are a frequent subject of For One More Day; however, because they usually appear in service of the central drama of Chick’s fall from grace and subsequent redemption, they are best understood as a motif rather than a theme that develops as the narrative progresses. Chick’s mother is above all a source of unconditional love, and the book can be understood as his journey toward forgiving himself enough to accept that love.
The other major mother figure in the book is Catherine, Chick’s wife. He does not include many details about her life or personality, her role as the mother of Chick’s child is important to the narrative in that it connects her to his mother. When Chick finds out his mother has died, he loses control of his life, and his divorce from Catherine follows. He later realizes that the circumstances around his mother’s death lead him to believe he no longer deserves the love and stability that come with a family. Redemption for Chick means a renewed closeness with the mothers in his life: his own mother, his ex-wife, and his daughter, who is pregnant at the end of the narrative and plans to name her son after her father.
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By Mitch Albom
