62 pages • 2 hours read
E. LockhartFamily of Liars
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Fairy Tales
Carrie uses fairy tales as a motif to illustrate aspects of her past that she feels she cannot express without allusion. Carrie identifies with the fact that fairy tales reveal what is both “ugly and true” (54) about human nature, as Carrie herself identifies with both heroes and villains at various points in her story. This duality shows that Carrie is capable of both light and dark, good and evil.
The most prominent example of this duality is in Carrie’s retelling of the fairy tale “Mr. Fox.” She first uses the story as a way to explain her relationship with Pfeff: “I am Lady Mary, longing for love, enraptured by a new romance, protected by her siblings. And Pfeff, he is Mr. Fox” (164). When she first tells the story, Carrie is the heroine Lady Mary who uncovers the evil of Mr. Fox, who views women as objects to use and discard, much like Pfeff’s actions show.
Later on, Carrie realizes that she has more in common with Mr. Fox than she thought: “It was Pfeff I killed. But I could just as easily have killed Penny. I am Cinderella’s terrible, jealous stepsister. I am the ghost whose crime went unpunished. I am Mr. Fox’’ (266). Carrie admits to killing Pfeff in a fit of rage that almost turns her against Penny as well, which to Carrie proves that not only is she capable of one of the darkest actions a human can do to another, but that she felt in the moment that she could do it to her own sister.
After Carrie has revealed the darkest parts of her past, she decides that maybe her darkest decisions do not have to define her entire story. Carrie relays the facts of her life, the good and the bad she has done, beginning with “once upon a time.” She decides that perhaps she is Lady Mary, after all, a woman that “exposes the horrors she has uncovered” (296) and asks those around her, as Carrie has done with her son Johnny, to bear witness: “This, I said to my son, is the worst I have seen and the worst I have done. Please bear witness. I do not want such horrors to determine my future” (297). Carrie never fully exorcizes fairy tales from her psyche, but she does allow her ability to retell them and reinterpret them to be a method for her to move on with her life and to continue authoring her story as it unfolds.
Rosemary’s Ghost
Rosemary, the youngest Sinclair sister, dies early on in the text after drowning on Beechwood Island. Rosemary’s ghost is a symbol of Carrie’s unaddressed issues. Carrie views herself as the protector and savior of her sisters, but her interactions with Rosemary’s ghost teach her that it is she who needs support and saving. Carrie believes for much of the text that Rosemary visits only her out of everyone in the family because Carrie is the only one that openly mourns her. Rosemary herself is not clear at first why she “wakes up,” knowing only that “I wake up ‘cause I’m worried or I want something. I’m supposed to be asleep, but I can’t be” (244). Carrie mistakenly believes that because her family does not speak about Rosemary, they do not think about her, and so Carrie takes it upon herself to make Rosemary feel wanted and loved so that she may rest.
At the end of the text, Rosemary reveals that the true reason she cannot stop visiting Carrie at Beachwood is that Rosemary is worried about Carrie’s addiction. Rosemary cannot rest until she knows that Carrie will commit to sobriety and choose to live a healthier life. Carrie admits to Rosemary that she has been “sick in a lot of ways. And guilty. And ashamed and angry. I have been all these things for a very long time” (290), using her addiction as a way to cope with these feelings. Seeing that Rosemary cannot rest without worry about Carrie, she decides: “I’m not trying to be numb anymore. I’m going to live with the sadness and the shame, and actually feel them [...]. I’m going to just go on, one day and then another day” (290). Interacting with Rosemary’s ghost enables Carrie to see that, despite all that she has done in her life, “I have a future” (291). She can live with what she has done, and now that Rosemary is gone, “all I can do is keep my promises to her” (293). Carrie ultimately decides to get better and to continue living, but it is not without Rosemary’s ghost that she is able to see that she deserves to.
The Black Pearls
The black pearls are a symbol of Carrie’s true parentage, which holds the key to Carrie’s understanding of why she feels uneasy about her place in her family. Carrie’s mother tells her that her black pearls will one day belong to Carrie: “Your father bought these for our second anniversary when I was pregnant with you [...]. It was a very meaningful gift [...]. Things weren’t easy then” (33). Carrie learns later that the pearls were a gift from Harris to Tipper, given after they decided to remain married even though Tipper was pregnant with Buddy Kopelnick’s child.
This knowledge alone causes Carrie to question her place in her family: “I am overwhelmed, suddenly, with the idea that my position in the family is conditional [...] he does not have to love me” (140). Carrie has always felt like a misfit in her family ever since Harris insisted that she undergo corrective jaw surgery that changed the structure of her face “so that I looked like him. He erased the Buddy Kopelnick in my face” (150). Carrie’s anxieties are confirmed when later on, she sees her younger sister, Penny, wearing the black pearls at a dinner party: “Tipper let her wear my pearls, the pearls that tell the story of Buddy Kopelnick [...]. She let my sister have the pearls that tell the story of me” (150). Penny tells her that Tipper let her wear them, and Carrie, who already feels threatened by Penny’s beauty, views this as further evidence that she does not matter to her family. Carrie regards Penny wearing the pearls as effectively erasing her history and her place in her family.
Carrie holds this belief until Harris reveals that he burned the murder weapon. Carrie realizes that this means her adoptive father does love her, and Harris confirms this: “I am letting you know what I really did so that you can stop moaning about Buddy Kopelnick, stop messing around with my sleeping pills, and be the Sinclair I have always considered you to be” (276). With this, Carrie’s identity no longer needs the black pearls for affirmation; she can claim her place as a member of the Sinclair family without uncertainty.
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By E. Lockhart
