Connell's car (Symbol)
Connell's car represents the safety and privacy of Connell and Marianne's relationship. In Connell's car, the central couple are always alone, able to speak freely. Because the car is by definition a liminal, portable place, it lacks the constraints and contextual limitations of either character's family home, allowing the two to relate to one another as individuals while shedding the limits of their imposed identities and backgrounds. The car moves the protagonists between Carricklea and Dublin as well, becoming one of the few objects that stays constant as the couple moves between the two locations. Finally, Connell uses his car to help Marianne escape her abusive family, symbolizing the broader rescuing role that they have played in each others' lives.
Marianne's apartment (Symbol)
At the start of college, Connell lives in a crowded, unpleasant apartment owned by the university. Marianne, though, lives alone in a peaceful apartment owned by her family. The apartment, then, symbolizes Marianne's wealth, the difference between how she and Connell approach money and class. Her experience in college is rarefied, far more luxurious than that of students living in dormitories—but it also sets her apart from her peers, contributing to her isolation. After their first year of college, the protagonists break up, primarily because Connell is unable to pay his own rent, and is afraid to ask Marianne for a place to stay. Their very different reactions to this situation reveal a good deal about their respective orientations to money. Marianne, who does not pay her own rent and sees sharing her wealth as no burden at all, is insulted by Connell's hesitation. Thus a disagreement over the apartment, and over money as a whole, divides Connell and Marianne even when they are deeply in love. At the same time, much of their romance takes place within the apartment's privacy: Marianne's wealth is a source of loneliness and division, but also, at times, a source of refuge.
Connell's grey notebook (Symbol)
As Connell becomes more passionate about writing, and begins to see the world through the lens of literary language, he begins to carry a grey notebook with him. This notebook symbolizes Connell's imagination and the creative part of his personality that even Marianne cannot fully access. Though Connell's academic performance at Trinity is excellent, he often feels alienated by the pseudo-intellectual posturing around him, and has trouble separating his own interests from the expectations of others. His notebook is a space belonging to him entirely, beholden to none of the norms of the outside world. It is within the notebook's pages that he develops as a writer.
Clothing (Motif)
At the beginning of the novel, when both protagonists live in Carricklea, Connell dresses in simple and inexpensive athletic clothes and wears the same sneakers everywhere he goes. He is socially comfortable, surrounded by an unchanging group of people, and his clothing reflects that. Marianne's classmates consider her clothing ugly, and it creates a shell of privacy and inaccessibility around her. In college, though, Marianne's clothes are seen as appealing and artistic. As she becomes more comfortable and begins to enjoy her popularity, she starts to choose clothing that stands out slightly more, wearing a beret and dark lipstick. Connell, meanwhile, changes little in his dress after moving to Dublin. He is bewildered by the norms of his new environment and finds his male classmates' clothing choices bizarre. The most judgmental of his peers are outwardly critical of his clothing choices—for instance, Peggy mocks the necklace that he has worn since high school. To a great extent, both main characters' social standing and level of comfort around others can be tracked through their clothes.
Online communication (Motif)
Early in the book, Connell and Marianne begin texting one another. Marianne feels unusually powerful, aware that she is in the coveted position of communicating with the popular Connell, and aware that she has the ability to reveal this to others. However, she chooses not to tell anyone. In fact, throughout their relationship, the digital sphere is an almost singularly private space for the two characters—even amid the book's explicit critique of technological surveillance. They exchange emails so intimate that Connell, when he reunites with Marianne in person, longs to email her. He speaks to his girlfriend Helen over video call instead, but her friends are often present, and the conversations are shallow and uninteresting: the relatively public nature of the platform matches the public-facing, non-intimate nature of that particular relationship. After Rob dies, meanwhile, Marianne is intrigued and upset by the posts friends leave on his Facebook wall. In this moment technology seems to obscure the line between living and dead, and to dissolve the barriers of privacy around individual friendships.
Sports (Motif)
When Connell is in high school, sports are an arena of creativity, closeness, and emotion for him. He feels often that his friendships are shallow and dishonest, and he hides his interests in order to fit in. Yet on the school football team, his relationships are intense and raw, and he is able to nurture at least one of his talents. For Marianne, sports are something to be avoided: she has no interest in football and feels excluded by her school's emphasis on athleticism. At the same time, watching Connell play, she is struck by his beauty. The experience of watching him do something he excels at, whether it is sports or writing, is moving to Marianne. Later, after they move to Dublin, Connell will continue to care about sports, even though they are considered uncool and unsophisticated by many around him. They become one remnant of his past, setting him apart from the culture around him. However, he will look back in amazement on his high school days, in which sports were one of the few areas where he was able to experience intense emotion.
