French Exit contains multiple discussions of life and death, with death often seen as another part of life. Through both Franklin’s possession of a cat and Frances’s cyclical relationship with Paris, Patrick deWitt shows that there is a circular nature to life’s stages.

When Frances and Malcolm first arrive in Paris, she confides, “I never wanted to live one life, […] I wanted to live three lives” (85). Frances does live three lives, or at least experiences three distinct stages of life: her childhood and adolescence, her marriage, and her life after Franklin’s death. In each of these stages, Frances’s relationship to Paris, and what it symbolizes for her, shifts accordingly. The city is a recurring motif in her life, and deWitt uses her changing perspective on Paris to illustrate how Frances feels about her life in general, and what each stage of her life means to her.

Frances first traveled to Paris as a young girl and remembers it fondly. In this first stage of her life, as she tells Susan, “I came here all the time. […] I loved it in a way that took me by surprise—startled me, actually” (218).