63 pages • 2 hours read
Lucy FoleyThe Midnight Feast
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A 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
“The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” Song
Lucy Foley uses the children’s song “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” throughout the narrative as a motif for the theme of Magic as a Natural Force. The song is popular in the United Kingdom despite having “one of the most sinister sets of lyrics ever composed” (Stein, Sadue. “Picnic Time.” The Paris Review, 28 Aug. 2015). The lyricist, Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy, is said to have been inspired by a wooded grove near his home in Somerset. The lyrics and creepy melody resonate with the events in The Midnight Feast underscoring the menacing narrative tone: “If you go down to the woods today / You’re sure of a big surprise. / If you go down to the woods today / You’d better go in disguise!” In the text, the song is used in reference to The Birds, who meet in the woods disguised as crows, and their desire for Vigilante Justice in a Local Community.
In The Midnight Feast, Foley implies that the spooky aspects of this song and its thematic resonance motivate Francesca to play the song to scare Bella in the woods when they were teenagers. In the present day of the narrative, she indicates that the song has left a kind of supernatural impression on the area, absorbing its magic. When Bella returns as an adult and thinks she sees a cloaked figure outside her cabin, she hears the song “playing on repeat in [her] head” (59). When Owen works in the forest cutting down trees to build the Treehouse section of the hotel, he thinks he hears “the tinkling melody of an old children’s tune. ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic,’ with its curiously menacing promise of a secret woodland gathering” (129). Eddie later makes the connection between the song and The Birds explicit when he notes that the locals learn a different set of lyrics to the tune: “Tonight’s the night / the Night Birds make their mischief” (202).
Crows
In The Midnight Feast, Foley uses crows as a motif of the natural world, and to reinforce the theme of Magic as a Natural Force. Throughout the narrative, crows serve as an omen or warning to those who attempt to evade justice. The Birds—who take the crow as their avatar—dress as crows, wear crow masks and capes covered in black crow feathers, and tattoo themselves with the bird symbol that also appears carved into trees and doors to signal The Birds’ communications and warnings. The Black crow’s feathers are found near Lord Meadows’s body and Francesca dies with one in her hand, underscoring The Birds’ commitment to Vigilante Justice in a Local Community. In the animal kingdom, many believe crows to hold “crow court” wherein they congregate and deal out justice amongst themselves. Although ornithologists refute this popular belief as a folk legend, it increases the thematic significance of Foley’s motif, as the birds in The Midnight Feast harness this symbology through their actions and ritual practices.
The climax of Foley’s narrative cements the connection between the natural world and folk magic, blurring the line that divides the two. When Eddie dons the crow costume in his attempt to stop Francesca, he equates the spirit of the crows with a deep and profound need for justice: “somewhere deep inside [him] a fire has been lit. And [he] can hear a chattering in [his] head like the chattering of the hundreds of birds on the lawns this morning” (403). As he pursues Francesca, Eddie believes “it’s not enough for her to be scared. [he] need[s] more. The Birds need more” (403). In this scene, Foley melds Eddie’s personal desire for revenge with the sensation of being driven by a force outside of himself as he channels the spirit of the crows.
The Heat
Throughout the four days leading up to the solstice celebration that forms the present-day timeline of The Midnight Feast, the weather grows progressively hotter, paralleling the escalating tension in the story and contributing to the novel’s menacing tone. For instance, when Owen finds the dead cockerel nailed to Francesca’s door, the smell makes him nauseous, and he notes that “the heat won’t have helped” (97). The morning of the solstice, he feels as if “the air [is] as heavy as a wool blanket” (247). Bella is likewise affected by the heat, describing it as “unnatural, punishing” (294). In a visual symbol of how the heat is causing anxiety, death, and decay, she wonders if the arrangements on the party tables “are already wilting in the heat: the leaves curling, the petals browning, the berries splitting and running with juice” (294).
After the events of the solstice party, the heat breaks and the weather cools although it remains unseasonably warm, reflecting the lingering pain of the narrative’s climactic revelations. When the detectives arrive on the scene the day after the solstice, it is still hot but, as Detective Fielding notes, cooler than the “unnatura[lly]” hot weather of the previous day, suggesting that both literally and metaphorically, the weather is starting to break and cool off after the release of the growing tensions between the characters.
Foley also makes a connection between the heat and the increasing effects of climate change, providing an additional critique of conspicuous consumption to underscore Class Tensions in a Small Town. Francesca notes that the unseasonably warm weather is due to global climate change, but she thinks of it simply as “good for business” (22). Francesca recognizes that the luxury of the wealthy contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, but rather than feeling guilty about this, Francesca, with her upper-class entitlement, celebrates the ways in which it benefits her business. In contrast, working-class characters like Eddie and Bella are negatively impacted by the heat.
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