Still Alice

Throughout the novel, clocks are a recurring symbol of Alice’s loss of time; as such, they function both as a marker and as a weapon. The different readings on Alice and John’s clocks at the start of the novel establish the relativity of time and the couple’s different natures and stances. Later, in Dr. Davis’s office, it is his request—and Alice’s inability—to draw a clock that humiliates and infuriates Alice; the clock, or lack thereof, is a symbol of her decline and of John’s increasing distance from her. By the end of the novel, Alice’s inability to tell time marks her decline, yet she still feels beholden to the idea of it, insisting on knowing the time before asking to go home, even if the two, at that moment, really have nothing to do with one another (280). 

Alice’s BlackBerry functions as a symbol of her own wellbeing. At the start of the novel, while at dinner with Lydia, she leaves her BlackBerry behind at the table in an early indication of her lapses in memory, as she is unable to recall even using her BlackBerry at dinner (18). As the novel progresses, her BlackBerry becomes a symbol of her own agency: as a tool, the BlackBerry allows her to retain information she otherwise might know, while also holding the key to her original, ultimately failed, plan for when the disease finally took over too much of her mind.