46 pages • 1-hour read
All Her Little Secrets
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Symbols & Motifs
The Brethren Lapel Pin
The Brethren Lapel Pin represents racism and white supremacy. Ellice first notices the lapel pin at Nate’s cocktail party, as “a red heart sitting across two intersecting gold flags” (79). When Ellice notices the matching lapel pins on the suits of two older board members, one of them immediately engages in an “example of polite racism” by asking Ellice the origin of her last name (79). Morris foreshadows the pin’s meaning, as every time Ellice notices it, the person wearing the pin discriminates against her in some way.’
When Ellice discovers that the pin is a racist dog whistle, she realizes that Jonathan, Max, and Hardy, are involved in the white supremacist hate group. The pin is used to explore the contradictory subtlety and blatancy of racism and white supremacy. Through the example of The Brethren, Morris reveals the hatred and destruction of implicit racism, as it harbors the underlying belief that people of color are inherently inferior to white people.
Chillicothe
Chillicothe represents Ellice’s secrets and past traumas. Throughout the novel, Morris uses Chillicothe as a setting in Ellice’s flashbacks. The rural town consists of “shotgun houses and weed-covered yard,” a place that is quite different than Ellice’s condo in Atlanta (36). Chillicothe holds all of Ellice’s trauma. When Detective Bradford first questions Ellice, she has a series of flashbacks of Chillicothe, including “a slim, blue metallic knitting needle, a dirty gray tarp, mud-brown water rising against a rugged riverbank” (35). Every image of Chillicothe reminds her of her abuse, sexual assault, abortion, and murder of Willie Jay.
Ellice also associates Chillicothe with the lack of love she received from her mother, Martha. Martha blames Ellice for everything that has gone wrong in her life and Ellice hopes that maybe her “leaving Chillicothe would make [Martha] happy and she just didn’t know it yet” (70). Ellice returns to Chillicothe with Vera because Ellice wants to make Chillicothe the home that it never was for her in the past. Ellice knows that she ran from Chillicothe, because she was always “so eager to live somewhere else. To be someone else” (370). Rather than let Chillicothe represent her traumatic past, Ellice chooses to make Chillicothe her home, separate from her childhood.
Elephants
Morris uses the motif of elephants to represent the way people in authority assert their power over others. The epigraph of the novel outlines the African proverb that Nate quotes later in the novel: “When elephants fight, the only thing that suffers is the grass” (129). At the beginning of the novel, Ellice sees a painting of an African elephant in Nate’s office when he tells her that he is promoting her.
Nate tells her about elephants’ intelligence and commitment to family, which Nate says, “Reminds me of us here at Houghton […] charging forward, sticking together, taking care of our own. There’s power in that” (24). Ellice sees it as an example of how Nate is “living out his colonial fantasies by shooting up some poor animals out in the wilderness for sport” (24). Nate reminds Ellice of the importance of keeping the peace with Jonathan and Max when he tells her that “when the folks in power bicker, innocent folks get hurt in the process” (129). Although Ellice finds wisdom in Nate’s words, she soon realizes that Jonathan, Max, and Hardy do not worry about hurting innocent people. Ellice wasted her time with a corporation that dehumanizes her, rather than spending time with her real family. Ellice regrets her choices, and when given the opportunity, returns to Vera to recommit to her family.
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