43 pages • 1 hour read
Emily M. DanforthThe Miseducation of Cameron Post
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A 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
Quake Lake
During the Montana-Yellowstone earthquake, Cameron’s mother narrowly dodges death as a child, while Margo Keenan’s brother, who had once kissed Cameron’s mother, did not. Many years later, Cameron’s parents die at Quake Lake. Cameron wonders if it was her mother’s destiny to die at Quake Lake. The lake repeatedly appears throughout The Miseducation of Cameron Post and signify key moments in Cameron’s spiritual coming-of-age. First, Cameron steals a photo of her mother at Quake Lake while Ruth and Grandma Post are out. Cameron and Ruth pass the lake on the way to God’s Promise. Right before Cameron’s escape from Promise, Grandma Post tentatively asks Cameron if she would like to visit the lake over the summer. Finally, Cameron chooses Quake Lake as the first destination after her escape and as the place to make amends with her parents. There, she figuratively baptizes herself in the chilly water and resolves the sense of responsibility she feels over their deaths.
Movies
After Cameron’s parents die, she begins frequenting the video story. She rents Beaches, a film that she and her mother watched in theatres together and bonded over. The film features the death of a parent. Cameron notes why she re-watched the film: “I felt like I needed something official to show me how all of this should feel” (35). After Cameron kisses Irene, then consequentially stops talking to her, Cameron begins renting films that feature lesbian relationships or alternative female leads like Personal Best and Fatal Attraction. After meeting Lindsey, Lindsey sends Cameron film recommendations and even a VHS of the movie The Hunger, which includes a love scene between two women. It is this movie that Cameron takes over to Coley’s house on their first night in Coley’s apartment alone. This event prompts their sexual encounter and Cameron’s subsequent banishment to God’s Promise.
The Montana Landscape
The book returns to descriptions of the beauty of the Montana landscape, revealing Cameron’s love of her home despite its religious dogma. Cameron describes her and Irene’s ascent on the Ferris wheel at the county fair:
We were lifted up into the hot embrace of the ever-blackening Montana sky […] Up on top the air smelled less like grease and sugar, more like just-baled hay and the muddy waters of the Yellowstone as it lazed its way around the fairgrounds (44).
At Coley’s ranch, right before Coley and Cameron’s kiss, Cameron portrays the atmosphere outside as innocent and inviting: “[It was] muddy and smelled like grass and wild flowering crabapple trees and just-after-rain, the smell that laundry detergents and soap try to imitate with their ‘spring meadow’ varieties but can never pull off” (176). Even upon Cameron’s arrival to God’s Promise, she can’t help but observe how beautiful the landscape is:
The grounds at Promise had a little of everything that western Montana is famous for, things that the state tourism board makes sure show up on postcards and in guidebooks: golden-green fields for archery or horseback riding, densely wooded trails dotted with Indian paintbrush and lupine, two streams […], and a so-blue-it-looked-fake mountain lake only a mile and a half’s hike away from the main building (267).
Cameron’s Dollhouse
Cameron uses her dollhouse as an outlet for emotional and creative expression. After Ruth and Grandma Post move in with her, Cameron stashes the dollhouse her father made her when she was 5 in her bedroom. She puts things in the dollhouse that she steals, like a piece of fluorite from her science classroom. She glues her “treasures” such as gum wrappers and Nixon buttons to it. Later at God’s Promise, Cameron misses her odd crafting routine and steals diary containers from the God’s Promise kitchen to create a new dollhouse for herself.
