Beginning Middle End Themes

by Valeria Luiselli

This analysis draws on moments from across the whole book and may contain spoilers.

Underneath the road trip plot, the novel is wrestling with living through endings and starting again. It is about memories slipping away, inheritance from mothers and grandmothers, stolen labor echoing into the present, shifting identities, shape changing myths, and a landscape on fire. A story about being transformed in the middle, not reaching a destination.

You will find each theme in concrete moments: the grandmother's fear of forgetting, the stolen mosaic, the guide linking that theft to today's migration. Plus symbols: the Proteus mosaic as stolen history, the swordfish head as transformation and death, the Loeb Classics as shared memory, and Polaroids that shape the journey.

Major Themes in Beginning Middle End

Beginnings, endings, and the middle

The novel circles around how to start again after endings, and what it means to be caught in the middle of a story or a life. The narrator opens by asking how to reinvent her life after finishing a book, a project, and a divorce, while Aristotle's definition of plot is invoked to defend the middle as a place of suspension.

The narrator asks, 'How do I reinvent it, the story, our lives?' after finishing a book, a soundscape project, and a divorce.
The narrator quotes Aristotle's definition of plot as beginning, middle, and end, and describes being caught in the middle, no longer able to swim back to shore but with the other shore still far away.
The daughter searches for 'Omnes fines mundi' — all the endings of the world.

Memory, forgetting, and resistance to loss

Memory loss is a central fear from the opening grandmother's answer to what she fears in old age. The narrator tries to slow her mother's forgetting by having her memorize and translate Latin, while false memory and fabricated memory blur the line between real and imagined.

The grandmother replies 'Perder la mente' and 'Perder claridad' when asked what she fears most in old age.
The narrator tries to build a 'dike' against her mother's forgetfulness by having her memorize and translate texts.
The mother texts that her Proteus mosaic and earrings are missing, and the daughter asks whether she forgot she gave them the mosaic.

Mothers and daughters, inheritance and protection

The book traces the chain of mothers, daughters, and grandmothers, with the narrator seeing her own capacity reflected in her daughter and catching her mother's phrases in herself. Maternal fear—of losing a daughter, of failing to keep her safe—runs through the panic on the curb and the jellyfish sting.

The narrator observes her daughter's behavior as 'a strange mirror of my capacity or incapacity to raise her well on my own.'
She catches herself saying 'Fine, okay, yes' exactly like her mother and asks, 'When do we start speaking like our mothers?'
While waiting for her missing daughter, the Demeter and Persephone story feels 'more terrible, more real' — a story about the loss of a daughter.

Migration, stolen labor, and consequence

The novel connects Nanna's emigration and her theft of the mosaic to present-day migration and xenophobia. Anna the guide points out that the same ports where migrants board today are the ones tied to the villa's ancient craftsmen, and that this is consequence, not coincidence.

The daughter reads anti-migrant posters saying 'L'Italia ha bisogno di figli italiani' and points out the contradiction because Italians also emigrated, like Nanna went to Mexico.
Anna explains that the villa was rediscovered by farmers/tombaroli who were never credited, while archaeologists got the credit.
Anna says modern migration through those ports is consequence, not coincidence.

Metamorphosis, myth, and storytelling

Proteus's shape-shifting becomes the novel's model for both storytelling and identity: characters and objects keep turning into other forms. The narrator also looks for a myth to unlock her writing, and the daughter invents a theory that Nanna used the mosaic to travel to the future.

Proteus changes into a swordfish, camera, rainstorm, jellyfish, donkey, toothbrush, fire, boat, and book.
The narrator calls fiction 'where memory and imagination meet' when her daughter asks if it is possible to remember the future.
The daughter theorizes that Nanna took the Proteus mosaic to travel to the future and that they must travel back to Carthage to stop her.

Catastrophe, fire, and evacuation

The novel's present-day Sicily is threatened by Mount Etna, wildfires, and ash fall, placing the characters inside a slow-moving disaster. Vito prepares his boat in case military rescue boats do not come, and the narrator reflects that catastrophe is a sense of approaching the end rather than an event in space.

They learn Etna has erupted, Catania Airport is on fire, and trains are on strike.
Ash falls from the sky and Vito says the Mistral wind will bring the fires toward them, so they must hurry.
The narrator reflects that 'catastrophe' is not an event in space but 'a sense of time, the sense that we are approaching the end.'

Symbols and Motifs

Proteus mosaic

Represents stolen history, inheritance, and the story that must be returned; it is the object through which memory, guilt, and restitution are worked out across generations.

Nanna stole a small slab of the Proteus mosaic while working as an excavation laborer, after being fired for being a woman.
The daughter says the mosaic gave her nightmares and insists on returning it; Grandma eventually agrees, saying the trip back is long overdue.
On its back they find the inscription, 'The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place.'

Swordfish head

Stands for Proteus and for transformation, but also for the material reality of death and survival; it is bought, stored, disappeared, and finally used as a kind of currency.

The mother buys a swordfish head at the fish market and cleans it with salt and thyme before storing it in the fridge.
The daughter disappears with the swordfish head and returns hours later without it, refusing to say what she did with it.
Proteus's metamorphoses include a swordfish, and the narrator later leaves a swordfish head as a deposit for a five-euro loan.

Loeb Classics and Pliny volumes

Symbolize translation, memory, and the attempt to keep the mind alive; the books are shared between grandmother, mother, and daughter, and are even used as an oracle.

The narrator suggests her mother memorize and translate texts from her Loeb collection to build a dike against memory loss.
The daughter reads Pliny's Natural History in little red volumes and uses the book as an oracle, looking for 'Omnes fines mundi.'
Before leaving, the narrator and her daughter fill a white suitcase with Loeb Classics, choosing all the Pliny volumes.

Polaroid camera and photographs

Represents documentation, memory, and the daughter's way of capturing and shaping the journey; the novel's ending is told partly through Polaroid captions.

The daughter carries an old Polaroid camera in her red briefcase and later takes a photograph to develop.
The narrator buys a camera and three packs of film after winning money betting on speed chess, to document the journey.
The chapter ends with a list of 32 Polaroid captions, including 'Vito, dogs, cats' and 'Fire on the hills.'