The Bat Symbol in Anita de Monte Laughs Last
What Is the Bat?
In Anita de Monte Laughs Last, the bat is a physical animal that also serves as the primary form Anita de Monte’s ghost assumes to exert agency in the living world. Literally, it is a small flying mammal with leathery wings, sharp fangs, and the ability to hover. Metaphorically, it becomes the vehicle through which Anita—a murdered artist silenced by her husband Jack Martin and the art establishment—breaks into visibility and fights back.
Anita learns from another bat (the deceased lover of a painter she once helped) that some spirits can “go back up” as bats: they keep their physical form beyond the ceiba tree, travel between realms, and bite. The bat allows her to pass from the spectral limbo of the ceiba into the material world, where she can interact with objects, attack people, and reclaim her presence.
Where the Bat Recurs
The bat appears at several key turning points in the novel:
| Chapter | Scene | Who Encounters It |
|---|---|---|
| 16 | Jack and Ingrid at a borrowed cabin; the bat enters, turns on the stereo, and attacks them. Jack sees Anita’s eyes in its face. | Jack, Ingrid |
| 17 | Under the ceiba tree, Anita receives instructions from a bat (Marco’s dead lover); she learns how to transform and fly. | Anita |
| 20 | Anita, in bat form, attacks Tilly Barber in her apartment, shattering objects and defecating on the decor. | Tilly, Anita |
| 22 | Anita attempts to become a bat but fails; her art has been packed away. Old bat Roberto explains that bat power depends on active art. | Anita, Roberto |
| 23 | Jack confesses to Tilly that “Anita’s spirit, which has appeared as a bat, physically moves objects and modifies his installations.” | Jack, Tilly |
| 24 | Anita briefly torments Jack in Madrid and London, but he buys and buries her work, limiting her power. | Anita, Jack |
| 32 | In 1999, a champagne glass moves by itself—Anita’s supernatural act—and she appears before Jack with a mocking grin. | Jack |
| 34 | At Tilly’s 2000 party, Anita flies as a bat, changes the music, and chases Jack; she stops short of pushing him down the stairs. | Anita, Jack, Tilly, guests |
How the Bat’s Meaning Changes Across the Novel
The bat is not a static symbol; its significance evolves in tandem with Anita’s emotional arc and the state of her artistic legacy.
1. Instrument of Haunting and Vengeance
When the bat first appears in chapter 16, it is a terrifying, rabid force that attacks Jack and Ingrid. Jack immediately recognizes Anita’s “eyes and smirk” in the animal’s face, confirming that the bat is more than a random creature—it is a supernatural manifestation of his guilt and her rage. At this stage, the bat represents Anita’s desire to terrify and physically harm the man who killed her.
2. Empowerment and Identity
In chapter 17, Anita learns how to become a bat. The rule is paradoxical: to fly, she must first fall. This mirrors her death (falling from a window) and her need to embrace that fall as a source of power, not just tragedy. The bat form gives her visibility, the ability to bite, and the freedom to move between the ceiba and the mortal world. It becomes a tool for reclaiming agency after being silenced.
3. Conditional Power: Art as Fuel
A crucial shift occurs in chapter 22. After her retrospective is packed away, Anita loses her bat power. Roberto explains that only artists and muses can become bats, and only so long as their art is “out in the world” and “alive.” The bat symbol thus becomes conditional on the public existence of her creative work. When her art is hidden or suppressed, she is reduced to “just dead me.” When her art is restored (largely due to Raquel Toro’s research), her bat powers return.
4. Guardianship and Release
By the final haunting in chapter 34, the bat has transformed from a weapon of vengeance into a tool of protection. Anita flies through the party, creates chaos, and chases Jack toward a staircase—but she chooses not to push him. She is “tired of the cycle of vengeance” and, now that her work is back in the world, she is “a lot less pissed off.” The bat stops being an instrument of death and becomes a means of playful intervention. She later brings Raquel a mouse as a gift, a gesture of gratitude and guardianship.
Character and Theme Connections
Character Links
- Anita: The bat is her avatar in the ghost world. It expresses her anger, her desire for recognition, and eventually her capacity for mercy.
- Jack Martin: The bat is the embodiment of his conscience. He consistently sees Anita’s face in the bat, which proves she is haunting him. The bat undermines his control and his public image.
- Tilly Barber: She is the primary victim of Anita’s bat attacks. Anita destroys her perfect, orderly space (shitting on the rugs, breaking photographs) to protest Tilly’s complicity in erasing her legacy.
- Raquel: Raquel never directly encounters the bat, but she indirectly restores Anita’s power by researching her art and writing about her. The bat’s final transformation into a protective force is possible because of Raquel’s work.
Theme Connections
- Erasure of Women Artists: The bat’s conditional power—dependent on art being seen—literalizes the idea that erased artists lose even their supernatural agency. Anita’s power waxes and wanes with the visibility of her work.
- Haunting and Legacy: The bat is the mechanism of haunting. It blurs the line between memory and material presence, forcing the living to confront the dead artist’s continued existence.
- Power and Control: The bat represents a shift in power. Jack and Tilly control mortal institutions (law, galleries, press), but Anita controls the supernatural bat space. The struggle over her art is a struggle over who controls narrative and legacy.
- Identity and Belonging: Anita’s bat identity is tied to her Cuban roots (the ceiba tree, the Varadero beach) and her artistic identity. She learns to exist in a liminal state—neither fully alive nor entirely dead—which mirrors her position as a marginalized artist.
Four Study Questions with Answers
1. In chapter 17, the bat tells Anita she must first “allow yourself to fall” in order to fly. What does this action represent within the novel’s themes?
Answer: The fall is a metaphor for accepting death and loss as a precondition for transformation. Anita literally fell from a window to her death; by deliberately falling again as a bat, she reclaims that moment and turns it into the starting point of her flight. It also reflects the novel’s broader theme that marginalized artists must often experience erasure or descent before they can achieve lasting visibility. The fall becomes an act of faith and release, not a final defeat.
2. How does the bat symbol highlight the relationship between art and afterlife power in the novel?
Answer: In chapter 22, Roberto explains that Anita can only remain a bat as long as her art is “out in the world” and “alive.” This makes the bat conditional on public reception. When her art is stored or suppressed, she loses her ability to take bat form. In chapters 20 and 24, Jack and Tilly actively buy and hide her work, weakening her. Conversely, when Raquel helps restore Anita’s art in the early 2000s, Anita regains her full bat powers and chooses to stop haunting. The bat thus literalizes the idea that an artist’s legacy is their afterlife.
3. Why does Anita stop short of killing Jack in chapter 34, even though she has the power to push him down the stairs?
Answer: Anita decides she is “tired of the cycle of vengeance” and recognizes that her art has been restored, which lessens her rage. She remembers that “once there was so much love there” between her and Jack, despite everything. The bat form, which was previously a weapon of assault, now becomes a tool of self-preservation. She chooses to stop the haunting because she no longer needs revenge to feel powerful; her legacy is alive again.
4. Compare the bat attacks on Tilly (chapter 20) and on Jack (chapter 16). How do the two scenes reveal different purposes for the bat?
Answer: In chapter 16, the bat attacks Jack and Ingrid in a remote cabin. Jack immediately recognizes Anita’s eyes, confirming that the bat is a personal haunting meant to terrorize her murderer and disrupt his new relationship. The attack is vicious, targeting flesh (biting his nose) and playing on his guilt. In chapter 20, the bat attacks Tilly in her own apartment, but the focus is on destroying objects—photographs, furniture, the perfect decor. Anita shits on Tilly’s belongings to defile her pristine world. The attack on Tilly is less about physical injury and more about dismantling the comfortable, complicit environment that enabled Anita’s erasure. While Jack’s attack is visceral punishment, Tilly’s is symbolic destruction of the art-world machinery that suppresses inconvenient artists.