49 pages • 1 hour read
April HenryThe Girl I Used to Be
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A 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
Doubling/Repetition
The novel opens in medias res with Olivia’s flight through the woods—a mirror image, or “double” of her experience as a toddler when her parents were murdered. Functionally, this scene forces the reader to take the development of the story seriously. Knowing that Olivia will somehow move from a quiet life in Portland to a life-or-death situation alerts the reader to real danger and that Olivia’s actions have real consequences. Additionally, this move suggests that the main character is not necessarily going to survive the story. Knowing that Olivia might die a mere three weeks after the novel begins requires that the reader be conscious of her mortality throughout.
Repetition also occurs in the pairs of Detectives and Chaplains that visit Olivia at the beginning and end of the novel. Though the actual people are different, it’s significant that it is both one of the first things and one of the last things that happen in the narrative. Their roles may represent justice and comfort, two things that Olivia is sorely in need of throughout the text. The pairs also deliver Olivia into new phases of her life. The first set knocks her halfway out of her stagnant life and back to Medford; the second shepherds her into publicly reclaiming her identity as Ariel and beginning to reintegrate herself into the family she was denied for so long.
One of the most notable examples of doubling in the novel is literal: the memory “doubling” or layering that Olivia experiences as she attempts to use present experiences to prompt memories of the past. She describes this as a visual phenomenon; she sees one overlaid on top of the other. They are each visible to her in the same moment. This ties into the novel’s consideration of identity. Olivia and Ariel are so alienated within her mind that they can’t share a single vision but rather have to struggle to make sense of meaning when one is superimposed over the other.
Secrets
This motif of secrets ties in with the theme of public versus private personas. Most of people in the community who are keeping secrets are doing so to save face or avoid consequences for unethical or illegal actions. For example, Jason’s involvement with meth, Sam’s bulimia, and Richard Lee’s legal but exploitative business practices.
Considering Spaulding’s position as a law enforcement authority, his secret is most damaging to the community and deceitful on two levels: First, he was hiding in plain sight while the town worried over the murders for 14 years; second, he positions himself as a seeker of justice while concealing the grave injustice he committed. Spaulding also reveals how far a person might go to protect a secret. We see hints of this when Jason confronts Olivia at the barbeque, but it’s Spaulding who drives home the terrible things people are willing to do to protect themselves and their image.
Meanwhile, Olivia keeps her identity secret for good and obvious reasons, as she needs the anonymity to investigate. She believes that people are less likely to be truthful with Terry and Naomi’s long-lost daughter. Also, she worries that if her secret is exposed, she will be in danger from the killer. She’s proven right. It’s also important to consider how keeping this secret allows Olivia to keep a barrier between herself and the trauma she experienced in this town as a child. Being Ariel is terrifying, both in its implications and its emotional vulnerability. Therefore, Olivia’s secret serves as a defense mechanism.
Motivation
The novel explores the reasons why a person might do a terrible, violent thing. The abstract concept of murder is so abhorrent to society that people spend a lot of time trying to rationalize it in their minds. We see this happen repeatedly in Olivia’s interactions with the community members. She asks numerous people what they believe happened to Terry and Naomi, and she gets a variety of answers. This highlights the tendency of people to create distance between themselves and the “type of person” who would do something as awful as murder two young parents.
Most of the theories Olivia hears are based on the idea of stranger danger, which is statistically less likely than being killed by a loved one. What’s particularly interesting are the explicit discussions of motive that Olivia engages in during the novel. Many times, Olivia asks why someone would have done this. She’s offered options: love, hatred, jealousy, theft, compulsion, and serial murder. Almost all of these suggestions implicitly argue that a person would have to be out of their mind to commit such a crime; that no one in full possession of their wits would do such a thing. When we find out the truth about the murders, we discover that the person who committed them was in full possession of his wits. Spaulding was not driven to kill by intense passion. He didn’t do it because he knew he could steal money from Terry. He didn’t do it because he found it thrilling.
The truth is chilling: Spaulding murdered two young people because he, in full possession of his wits, found that outcome preferable to one that might negatively affect his own life. Spaulding had the option to admit to accidentally shooting Terry and accept the consequences. Instead, he weighed his quality of life against Naomi’s actual life and found in his own favor. That this is the outcome of an investigation that explored the theory of serial-killing truckers suggests that the mundanity of it is significant, as it questions how far the average person would go in serving their own self-interest.
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By April Henry
