I Ll Give You The Sun Symbolism

The title of the book, I’ll Give You The Sun holds interesting and thought-provoking symbolism, though one must do more than simply scratching the surface to see the true, deep meaning of the title that hits not only the main characters lives, but the readers as well. In a glazed-over view of the meaning, we simply have to turn to the scene in which the line is said in the novel. Only a quarter or so into the novel, we see that Noah has painted a picture of an attractive man that Jude wants for herself. She decides to offer him the trees, stars, and oceans for it. Noah refuses to give it to her until she offers him the sun, which she does. Noah is quite surprised when she does this, as it is evident that the sun is important to her after her hesitancy to hand it over to Noah in
When you really think about it— out of the specific context of Noah and Jude— the phrase “I’ll give you the sun,” usually means that you’ll do anything for someone. The sun is pretty important and is often a representation of life or happiness, so to give someone the sun is a pretty big deal. This deeper meaning of the sun as a symbol and not just the object is realized later in I’ll Give You The Sun. Close to the end of the book we discover that Jude would give up anything and everything for Noah. We see this in the way she acts towards Noah and in how she is willing to give up her spot at CSA (a prestigious art school) for him. This brings us back to the sun representing happiness. After the death of their mother, Noah becomes depressed and as he ages, he begins to lose who he is inside. Jude wants nothing more than to bring back Noah to his true self. She does exactly this by coming back to him and telling the truth of why he didn’t get into CSA (she didn’t mail his application). This then persuades Noah to reveal some secrets of his own that have also been keeping him from