68 pages • 2 hours read
Patricia Reilly GiffPictures Of Hollis Woods
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Mountains
In addition to a key part of the novel’s setting, mountains are an important signifier of Hollis’s self-perception. Before she moves in with the Regans, she hears herself referred to as “a mountain of trouble” (13) by the stucco woman. In this context, the mountain represents a vast and insurmountable obstacle, which is what Hollis has always believed herself to be: something that’s in the way. However, a mountain as a literal place does appear with positive connotations early in the book. After her time out in the First Picture, Hollis describes “looking at a picture of a pointy mountain” (2) and imagines herself living on top of one with a motley assortment of pets. Here, the mountain stands for escape from a stifling existence. The book indicates early on that, if Hollis could find peace on a mountain, she could make peace with herself.
The Regans’s house in Branches is at the foot of a mountain that the Old Man owns. Hollis notes in the Third Picture that, even though she didn’t grow up near mountains, this one immediately feels familiar to her. The mountain’s solidity parallels with the reliable permanence of the Old Man’s love. On the other hand, the road up the mountain is muddy and treacherous, and the Old Man himself frequently expresses worry at Steven’s desire to climb it. The mountain embodies the tension at the heart of her stint with the Regans: she simultaneously feels at home and constantly paranoid that she is putting a wedge between father and son. This conflict peaks the day she climbs to the mountaintop, symbolically surmounting her old “mountain of trouble” self and forging a deep connection with Steven when he comes to get her—only to have it all fall apart when the pickup crashes on the way back down. The real journey for Hollis turns out not to be climbing the mountain, but reconciling her relationship with the Regans. In the end, she is able to make peace with the former version of herself the mountain represents and to live by the Old Man’s mountain in a house much like the one she imagined as a small child.
Holly
The origin of the name “Hollis” is an old English reference to a place where holly trees grow. Immediately upon meeting Hollis, Steven asks her if people call her Holly, and says “We have a pile of holly bushes out front. Touch the leaves and they draw blood” (15). He announces he’s going to call her Holly from then on. The renaming represents several things. It shows how immediately the Regans accept Hollis and want to make her their own, especially since “Holly” is a softer and less formal-sounding version of her name. Steven’s identification of Hollis with a plant that grows abundantly at the Branches house emphasizes how much she belongs there. However, as he points out, holly is not an unproblematically friendly plant: it’s spiky and dangerous if you don’t handle it carefully. The name is an accurate encapsulation of the “tough” version of Hollis the foster care system has produced. Nevertheless, the whole family adopts the name Holly—it’s the name Izzy puts on her “welcome to the family” cake—so it’s clear they embrace her, spikiness and all.
Holly branches are a traditional Christmas decoration, with their festive bright red berries and ancient associations with good luck and protection. Christmas plays an important role in the story because Hollis invests so much in making sure her Christmas-in-hiding with Josie is a beautiful one. Hollis hangs a variety of branches, including holly, around the living room. Her embrace of holly shows that the Branches house is truly her safe place and symbolizes her coming into her own power as she cares for Josie.
Branches
The Regans’s summer house is in a place called Branches in upstate New York. No town with this name appears on any map, so it is likely the author’s invention. However, the town of Hancock, where the Regans have their winter house, is a real place in upstate New York, located exactly where the Delaware river splits into its West Branch and East Branch. The concept of “branches” in the novel is in part to do with this imagery, which mirrors the way the novel is constructed: the story has two branches, and the reader is propelled forward by a desire to understand how they intersect. That the Branches house is located atop that place of intersection shows that it is the central point around which both timelines revolve—Hollis’s summer there with the Regans and her winter there with Josie. They also symbolize the choices Hollis must make about which direction her life should go.
Branches frequently appear in other, more literal forms, as well. Josie’s primary art practice is carving likenesses into tree branches, which she takes great care in selecting and keeps planted around her yard. When she gifts Hollis with her completed branch portrait, it’s an important moment of Hollis feeling fully seen. When Hollis is cutting down evergreen branches to decorate the house for Christmas, she has a memory of the Old Man telling her “Hunters who were lost would pull tree branches together with rope, bending them to form a shelter. I loved the thought of that, the trees forming a cozy nest.” (127). Branches are protective, as Steven demonstrates when he leaves a holly branch on the back porch while he secretly watches over Hollis and Josie. Like the house in Branches, they provide Hollis with a safe place to be herself.
