13 Little Blue Envelopes

“As a rule, Ginny Blackstone tried to go unnoticed—something that was more or less impossible with the thirty pounds (she’d weighed it) of purple-and-green backpack hanging from her back.”

This is the reader’s first introduction to Ginny, the protagonist of 13 Little Blue Envelopes. Here, the author establishes a few of Ginny’s most defining characteristics: her shyness and her desire to be well prepared for any situation. Ginny’s large backpack, like the white sneakers she wears around Europe, symbolizes her status as a tourist and draws unwanted attention. In the final chapters of the novel, this backpack is stolen, thus symbolizing Ginny’s reduced concern for what other people think when they look at her.

“The news…the illness…it was all very distant to Ginny. Somehow, she’d never really believed it. Aunt Peg was still out there somewhere in her mind. And Ginny was somehow speeding toward her on a plane.”

The Personal Nature of Grief is an important theme in the novel. Ginny handles her grief for Aunt Peg, who died a few months prior to the events of the novel, by imagining that she isn’t really dead. This tactic of denial is evidence of Ginny’s youthful immaturity and also of the depth of her grief. Ginny’s denial is furthered, for a time, by Peg’s letters. Having a stack of unread envelopes from Peg makes it feel like she is still around, sending Ginny on exciting adventures and offering her advice. It is only when the letters are all gone that Ginny finds she can no longer ignore the reality of Peg’s death.