Newspapers (Motif)
Peter is a newspaperman who has recently been fired by his editor, Joe Gordon. While we do not know why he was fired, we suspect it had something to do with his sarcastic attitude and maverick spirit. Even after he's been fired, however, Peter remains a newspaperman, bent on getting his next story. When he first meets Ellie, she seems like his ticket back into the journalism game. Indeed, her picture is already on the front page of all the major newspapers, as her father has created a nationwide search for her. Throughout the film, we see sensational newspaper headlines about the missing Ellie. Peter is the only one who knows, and he plans to cash in on this knowledge by writing about their trip together. Then, once they have fallen in love, he sells the story of their love affair to Joe Gordon for $1000, enough money for him to feel comfortable proposing to the young heiress. The newspaper business is the biggest, most exciting business in town, and serves as an organizing principle for the film's plot.
"The Walls of Jericho" (Symbol)
When Ellie and Peter spend the night together after the bus is unable to cross a closed bridge during a storm, they must share a cabin. Neither of them has enough money to have their own room, and even if they did it wouldn't be very wise for Ellie to book a solo room as a vulnerable woman traveling alone. As an unmarried opposite-sex duo on the road, it is already pretty scandalous for Peter and Ellie to be sleeping in the same place, so Peter hangs up a curtain between their beds which he calls the "walls of Jericho," a reference to the Bible. The curtain symbolizes the distance between them—the fact that they don't know each other well—but it also symbolizes a boundary of sexual and romantic tension that is developing between the two of them. On either side of the curtain, the two of them must imagine the other dressing and getting into bed, a ritual that is almost more intimate than if they were to watch each other do just that. The curtain only raises tensions between them, causing them to fall more deeply in love. By the end, they are united, and Ellie's marriage to King Westley is annulled. The final image of the film is the curtain falling to the ground, which symbolizes the consummation of their love and their coming together in romantic bliss.
Nature (Motif)
The natural world comes up as a motif in the film. Peter in particular likes to talk about the natural world, and is much closer to nature than is the pampered and urbane Ellie. Peter is the one who leads them into their journey on foot, the one who carries Ellie across the river, makes her a bed of straw, and pulls carrots from the ground for food. When they are in bed in the same room for the first time and Ellie asks for his name, he tells her, "I'm the whippoorwill that cries in the night. I'm the soft morning breeze that caresses your lovely face." Then later, on the final night of their journey, he describes a romantic fantasy in which he and his hypothetical lover visit an island and jump in the surf, and "nights when you and the moon and the water all become one." Peter feels connected to nature; it represents freedom and the feeling of being alive.
Hunger (Motif)
When we first meet Ellie, she is staging a "hunger strike" in disobedience to her father, and is refusing to eat the lavish meals that he brings to her. She is a wealthy girl, with all the food in the world available to her, but she refuses to eat. Later, when she is on the road with Peter, she loses most of her money and does not have enough to buy any food. She complains of hunger, but when Peter brings her raw carrots that he pulled from the ground, she doesn't want to eat them. Released during the Great Depression, It Happened One Night tells the story of a girl who comes from an abundance of wealth who must learn what it is like to go hungry for a night. Part of Ellie's transformation from the spoiled girl she is at the beginning to the more grounded and thoughtful girl she is at the end is her navigation of deprivation and the practical struggles of those less fortunate than herself.
Exposure & Privacy (Motif)
Both Peter and Ellie expose themselves at different points in the film. First, on the night that they share the cabin, Ellie threatens to leave, not wanting to sleep in the same room as a man that she doesn't know very well. Peter insists that she doesn't have much of a choice, and begins to undress for bed. He takes off his shirt to reveal his bare torso (a scandalous exposure in 1934) and begins to undo his belt, when Ellie becomes overwhelmed by the scenario and runs to the other side of the room. Later, when they are hitchhiking, Ellie has a lot more luck than Peter when she exposes her leg to the passing cars, who immediately stop at the sight of a womanly exposure. Exposure is also at stake with the curtain that hangs between the two travelers' beds. The question of exposure comes up several times in the film, and represents the ways that sexuality and romance underly almost everything.
