Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Back at the House at Fox CornerDuring her many lives, Ursula Todd lives in the English countryside, London, Germany, and in one brief instance, with Hitler as Europe goes through World Wars I and I...
Narrator Point of View
Life After Life follows Ursula's many lives. When she dies, the narrative ends with her, and it begins again with her birth. However, she's not the narrator. The narrator is someone outside the sto...
What's Up With the Title?
You've heard the phrase Life After Death before, often referring to some sort of afterlife, but Life After Life isn't about an afterlife—it's about a now life, a life that happens over and over a...
What's Up With the Epigraph?
"What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innume...
What's Up With the Ending?
Life After Life can be seen as a book with dozens of endings, in the form of each of Ursula's deaths, but it can also be seen as a book with absolutely zero endings. After all, every single time sh...
Tough-o-Meter
Reading Life After Life is easier than walking into a German café and shooting Hitler in the 1930s. Okay, Ursula makes that look really easy, so maybe that's not the best comparison. Unlike books...