Harlequin Paper: “This Lullaby”

Kevin Connors

February 23, 2013

Honor code: "I pledge on my honor that I have not given or received any unauthorized assistance on this assignment/examination."

In This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen, Remy Starr is a cynical high school graduate eager to embark on her future and leave behind her past, not looking for love at all. She has seen her mother go through four previous marriages and is headed on to the fifth. She never knew her father and the only thing he left behind for her was an old song. The cynic in her is challenged when she meets Dexter, a boy who forces her to change her perspectives on love and life itself. With the family example she has had when it comes to love, the role of social networks is key in the progression of Remy’s past relationships and Remy and Dexter’s current relationship.
When Remy meets Dexter, she is at a crossroads in her life. She has just graduated high school and is about to head to Stanford University in the fall. Her mother is about to get married to her fifth husband and Remy is praying that this one will last. Dexter has come to town with his band that moves around every so often and is determined to capture Remy’s heart. Once he has, Remy is decided that their relationship will only be temporary and that she will leave for Stanford in the fall with no strings attached. When it came to love, Remy did not believe in it due to the examples that had been set by her mother. Dexter, in his own unspoken way, begins to break the cold exterior of her heart and even when they were broken up, she realizes she has begun to love him. Even after her mother’s fifth marriage fails but not by her mother’s doing, Remy realizes that her perspective was all wrong. Love is not the same for everyone and that when one takes a chance when it comes to love, it can lead to something amazing.
Remy’s mother, Barbara, has never had lasting relationships, a sure indicator of Remy’s reluctance to maintain a relationship of her own. She was never technically married to Remy’s biological father, Thomas Custer, and he ended up leaving her before Remy was even born. He died two years after Remy was born and only left behind a song “This Lullaby” which inspired the title of the book. Barbara would always leave her marriages when she would find something wrong with the man she married. She never had enough time to settle down with the man she married at that time and her relationships always “manifested themselves in her personality” (Dessen, 2002, p.151). Unlike Remy who liked to maintain her independence in relationships, her mother was the opposite. Remy’s mother was determined to make this fifth marriage her final one but the novel foreshadows that it will not last. At a cookout hosted by her mother, Remy decides that Don, her mother’s new husband, is an “asshole” (Dessen, 2002, p.158) for the way he treats Dexter. The next indicator is when Don and her mother are locked out of the house and Remy comes home to have Don scream at her that she needs to “learn some respect” (Dessen, 2002, p. 245) when he is exhibiting no respect for her or her mother. She leaves the home and refuses to be around the broken home that night and refuses to let herself be engrossed in the situation that just played out. The final indicator is when Remy discovers the picture of Don’s secretary on her mom’s and his bed, a sign that Don has been cheating on her mother. The novel juxtaposes Remy’s and her mother’s separate relationships. The mother who is always looking for love ends up with it being thrown back in her face while Remy who never consciously looks for love ends up with a boy who wants to turn all of that around for her.
Remy and her past relationships have always been temporary, never to last. Every past relationship she has had always has about an eight week span. She becomes infatuated with a guy, mostly for just the sex, for about four weeks and she makes sure to establish that their relationship is only temporary. By week six, she starts to become annoyed at little things about their personality and behavior. By week eight, she cannot stand these fissures in the perfect persona they had at week four and she terminates the relationship. She has learned from her mother that love does not last and it is not worth it to try and make things work; she sees something wrong in every guy she dates. She makes up excuses to avoid prolonging the relationship and she never stays tied down for too long. This summer, when she meets Dexter, her excuse is that she will be leaving for Stanford in the fall and she does not want a summer fling tying her down and forcing her to come back to her past. In reality, she is just scared that she will get burned by love and refuses to see where it leads.
When she meets Dexter, a boy who is determined to win her heart, she treats him the same as she has treated all of the other guys she has dated in the past but new feelings arise. These feelings begin to scare her since she is not used to them and slowly she begins to revert back to her old ways. Dexter tries to break the hard shell that she formed and while it begins to crack, she tries to build it back. She finds herself doing things for him that she would not normally do for a temporary relationship such as cleaning his room, washing his dog, and buying him silverware for his house. Her friends begin to notice and they question what she is doing and why she is doing it. Her friends, while not the main social network that is driving her doubts and feelings about love, play a small role in the relationship she holds with Dexter. They begin to tell her that they think she is too invested in him and that she needs to work her way out so that she can spend more time with them and be able to be free when she goes off to Stanford in the fall. It is clear that Dexter makes Remy his whole life when they are together and has no intentions of making their relationship temporary. When she tells a friend of hers while Dexter is with his band mates and is talking to a girl who may further their career that “[Dexter is] just a summer boyfriend. No worries. No entanglements. Just the way [she likes] it” (Dessen, 2002, p. 217) and Dexter overhears her. She had been avoiding discussing that subject with Dexter since she was beginning to have conflicting feelings about ending the relationship at all. Her jealousy got the best of her and she decided to let the cynic in her out to play once more. He does not understand why she treats her relationships like this and he forces her to change why she is treating him like all of the other guys in her past. While broken up, this causes Remy to have another change of heart. She thinks that she will be okay without him and will be fine just remaining friends with him. When contemplating the events in her life that have changed with the new dynamic of Don and her mom, her break-up with Dexter and a fight with her brother, she realizes that “love, or the lack of it” (Dessen, 2002, p. 254) is a universal concept. Remy claimed that “the chances we take, knowing no better, to fall or to stand back and hold ourselves in, protecting our hearts with the tightest of grips” (Dessen, 2002, p. 254) and that began her inevitable return back to Dexter and love that she never knew existed until then.
At the end of the novel, the clash of her biggest social network influencing her love decisions finally settles itself. Her mother addresses how her past relationships have helped to shape Remy’s concept of what relationships and love are. Remy has become cynical due to her mother’s failed relationships and the lack of connection with her deceased father. She believes that “love is a sham” (Dessen, 2002, p. 264) and that she has “yet to be convinced otherwise” (Dessen, 2002, p. 264). Her mother goes on to help open the door to Remy’s newly changed perspective. She says that despite the differences her and Don have, “the love [they] have for each other is bigger than [the] small differences” (Dessen, 2002, p. 264) and that “love can make up for a lot” (Dessen, 2002, p. 264). Remy is slow to believe this due to what she has seen in the past and tries to dismiss it but her mother insists that “holding people away…and denying yourself love…doesn’t make you strong” (Dessen, 2002, p. 265) which is what Remy’s whole concept of love was about. She believed that she had to be the strong individual in a relationship, always keeping guys at arm’s length and prepared to drop them in a minute if they started to become too close. She believed that she could get hurt and that made her reluctant to continue a relationship. When her mother addresses how Remy has emulated the way she treats relationships, Remy is forced to step back and take another look at the way she has acted. It causes her to reevaluate the relationship she held with Dexter and look closely at the new relationship she had just gotten into. It was not wise of her to drop something that was going well just because she was scared to get in too deep. She was anxious to leave the old life she had and start a new one at Stanford where she could keep up that sense of individuality she had always held. It was not wise of her to base her relationships off of her mother’s past because they are not the same. She was closing herself off to protect herself when really she was denying herself the chance to find out what love truly is. When she finally lets her guard down and allows Dexter to come back into her life, she realizes that her mistakes are not her mother’s mistakes and the relationships that she will hold are not the same. She grasped that life held no guarantees and that there was “no way of knowing what came next for [her], or him, or anybody” (Dessen, 2002, p. 344). Remy had always been decided on every aspect of her life. It was time now for her to allow the unknown in to see where love could take her. Remy is forced to change her perspective on love and life when a new boy comes into her life determined to do just that. Through the help of Dexter and her mother, she realizes that her relationships should not be based on her mother’s past relationships. She will make mistakes and possibly get hurt along the way but she learns that it is better to open herself up to love instead of hiding from what could be the best thing that ever happened to her.

References:
Dessen, Sarah. (2002) This Lullaby. New York, NY: Penguin Group