45 pages • 1 hour read
Lindsay CurrieThe Mystery of Locked Rooms
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | BCEA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Emotional Growth Through Challenge
In The Mystery of Locked Rooms, Lindsay Currie explores how challenges can spur emotional growth through the characters of Sarah, Hannah, and West. Each of these friends struggles with a different emotional issue, but through their adventures in the funhouse, the children each experience emotional breakthroughs as they open up to one another and deepen their connections and their friendships.
At the beginning of the novel, each of the Deltas is going through personal difficulty. Protagonist Sarah fears taking risks, the result of a lack of control over her family’s situation, like their financial hardships and her father’s disability, that makes her wary of taking chances or relying on luck. Hannah struggles with her confidence and self-esteem after she failed out of dance school the previous year. West also battles a lack of self-esteem because of his extraordinary memory: “I’m tired of it […] It’s not just that I can’t forget things the way a normal person does. It’s that once people figure out that I have a different memory, they make a huge deal of it” (125). Although Sarah and Hannah praise his ability, their attention still makes him feel self-conscious and uncomfortable. However, over the course of their adventure, the friends’ difficulties become assets and then points of growth.
The different challenges that Sarah, West, and Hannah face in the funhouse enable them to work through their respective issues. Each of them has a characteristic that they see as a drawback but ends up being an asset to the team during this adventure. Sarah’s fear of taking risks gives her the ability to assess probabilities from every angle. Hannah’s impulsiveness also means that she is usually the first one to delve into the unknown, and West’s memory helps the team on several occasions in the funhouse. Sarah points out how each of their struggles has become an asset and then a point of growth: “Think about it—every room in this funhouse has tested us somehow! Hannah had to learn to be patient. West had to finally accept and use his good memory. [I] learned the hard way that sometimes you can’t control or predict things” (208). The friends’ journey through the funhouse therefore parallels their character arcs, as each one of them learns and grows as a result of the challenges they are faced with. Currie communicates the important message that their innate characteristics are, when used in moderation, assets, and in the end, become points of growth for each of the characters.
Parallels Between the Past and the Present
The Mystery of Locked Rooms draws parallels between the past and the present by framing two sets of characters, the Deltas and the Stein triplets, as counterparts. Throughout the story, Sara, Hannah, and West encounter clues and challenges set by the triplets decades earlier, creating a sense of direct communication between them. Both the triplets and the Deltas also play into the Rule of Threes, which reinforces their similarities, and they share a love of games and mathematical riddles.
In addition to the parallels between the characters, the novel also emphasizes the similarities between the older concept of a funhouse and contemporary escape rooms. West explains that “these triplets built the funhouse way back in the 1950s. […] They wanted their funhouse to be the most epic one ever built, so […] they built a bunch of complicated secret passages and hid riddles everywhere” (15), prompting Sarah to reflect that it was “[l]ike an escape room before there were escape rooms” (16). By drawing this direct parallel, Currie makes the funhouse more relatable and easily identifiable to younger audiences who may not be familiar with that type of attraction. Sarah’s observation also reminds the Deltas of the many similarities between themselves and the triplets, despite the decades between them.
The novel also elaborates on the emotional similarities between the triplets and the Deltas, particularly Sarah. She realizes that the way she struggles to accept her father’s disability mirrors Hans’s and Karl Stein’s grief when their brother Stefan died: “Sometimes when I see things I used to do with Dad, I feel [sad]. […] I don’t want to do any of that stuff if he can’t do it with me. Maybe it was the same for Hans and Karl. Without Stefan, the funhouse just might not have been fun anymore” (31). With this direct connection, Sarah can view her own situation from a different perspective, offering distance but also recognition of the universality of what she is going through.
At the end of the story, Sarah earns ownership of the funhouse specifically because of her similar mindset to the triplets, and the house comes to represent both the Stein brothers’ and Sarah’s emotional growth through adversity. Sarah realizes that the funhouse’s challenges seem tailored to her because, like her, “[the triplets] learned the hard way that sometimes you can’t control or predict things” (208). In other words, the novel draws parallels between past and present characters to emphasize that seemingly universal message.
Teamwork and Friendship
Throughout The Mystery of Locked Rooms, Currie explores the nature of teamwork and friendship through the evolving partnership between Sarah, Hannah, and West. At the beginning of the book, Sarah explains that she, Hannah, and West share a bond best symbolized by their nickname, the Deltas: “[W]e all love math and numbers. Like three sides of the same triangle, none of us can imagine what life would be like if we weren’t together” (3). Throughout the story, their friendship is made evident by their shared love of math and riddles, their teamwork to overcome challenges, and their unconditional support of one another. However, Sarah, West, and Hannah’s relationship deepens even further as they deepen their connection, supporting each other as they work through their emotional issues.
Each of the Deltas overcomes a particular insecurity during their adventure in the funhouse. First, Hannah makes a mistake due to her impulsivity, which causes her to break down when Sarah gets upset with her. Hannah shows her vulnerable side when she admits that she feels insecure about failing out of dance class. She reflects, “I think that’s why I make decisions so fast. I keep hoping that someday my choice will be the right one, and I’ll save the day, you know?” (100). West and Sarah then show that they understand the true meaning of friendship, offering support and listing some of the reasons why they love her, with Sarah concluding: “You do a lot, Hannah. You just don’t give yourself any credit” (100). Once she cheers up, Hannah can complete more demanding tasks by taking her time, like patiently working to get the key out of her cage. Similarly, when West opens up about his insecurity about his extraordinary memory, Sarah and Hannah offer their support, bolstering his confidence. Toward the end of their adventure, West shows how he has grown and changed thanks to his friends when he uses his skills more confidently and even makes a joke about being unable to forget a clue.
Like Hannah and Will, Sarah is confronted with a challenge that embodies her worst fears, namely, losing control and embracing chance. When Sarah hits an emotional low, Hannah and West again offer their unconditional support and point out her many strengths. Sarah recovers and grows, even adopting the wishbone as her own symbol of luck at the end of the story, further cementing her emotional growth. In the end, the three protagonists are closer than ever after working through physical and emotional challenges together. As West points out, “If [one of us fails], we fail. We’re a team. [We’re] not doing this alone” (166). The story concludes with Sarah, Hannah, and West leaving the funhouse to try out a new escape room, illustrating their return to normalcy, their enduring friendship, and an even stronger team.
