All the Little Raindrops

“Women. What petty creatures they could be. So ruled by emotion. It could be their strength, too, of course. But most often, it controlled them.”

Here, the Collector’s misogyny indirectly characterizes him as judgmental and proud, as he implicitly considers himself superior to the women he dismisses. His thoughts also foreshadow what happened to his mother and sister at the massacre, as this is what shaped his belief in women’s susceptibility to emotions: Both died because they were not “brave enough” to seize the chance of escape. More broadly, the quote develops The Concurrence of Humanity’s Good and Evil by establishing the Collector’s deeply flawed character.

“She felt like she was underwater, trying desperately to surface, to shrug out of her own skin rather than face this reality. Rented.”

After Noelle learns that she’s been “rented” for the first time, the narrator uses a simile to compare her feelings to the sensation of drowning. The language suggests that The Psychological Impact of Trauma is not, in fact, purely psychological; Noelle’s dread and panic, both during and after her captivity, manifest as heaviness weighing on her whole body.

“He doubted most players bothered to look up specifics about the contestants. He doubted players would see any advantage in something like that. But the Collector knew better. The Collector understood the value of information.”

This line indirectly characterizes the Collector, who readers later learn to be Vitucci. Although he feels completely distinct from the other “players” of the game, believing himself to be smarter than they are, this very certainty demonstrates that he does share one quality with them: pride. Moreover, he plays with others’ lives, as the other players do, when he uses the information he collects to help certain captives escape. The passage thus illustrates the Collector’s moral ambiguity.

“In a turbulent sea of horrible, it was a small life raft.”

Noelle has just been raped, and this metaphor compares her experiences to a “turbulent sea.” Meanwhile, the fact that the man was not otherwise violent with her is akin to a “life raft.” That she is grateful for this underscores the extent of the brutality she has had to endure.

“His father had hit him over the years when he’d been displeased with him. And he’d often been displeased with Evan.”

This passage indirectly characterizes Evan and his father, and it also demonstrates the kind of information that the Collector retains for future use. The revelation that Sinclair abused Evan recontextualizes much of Evan’s behavior while revealing Sinclair’s cruelty. When the Collector sees how well Evan endures physical pain, he comes up with a way for Evan to unlock his own cage, sending him the rubber mallet.

“He’d made a promise, and one thing Evan had learned as he’d sat in the bowels of hell was that he could be stripped of everything and still keep his word. It was his. No one had been able to steal it, and he wouldn’t allow them to now.”

This metaphor compares Evan and Noelle’s captivity to hell—traditionally, a place of eternal suffering and therefore a comparison that highlights the extremity of their trauma. However, the passage also reveals Evan’s character growth. He begins as a somewhat entitled “golden boy” but finds integrity and resilience in his experiences: Rather than lament what he has lost, Evan focuses on what he still has and what can never be taken away from him.

“But the men watching only understood two things when it came to a rental: violence and degradation. He had to blend if he was going to win. Perhaps, initially, they’d thought his form of manipulation weak, but then, he’d earned her tears, while they had not.”

The Collector has no wish to rape or brutalize Noelle, as the other players who “rent” her do, so he must find a way to degrade her without physically harming her if he is to avoid tipping Van Daele and Sinclair off about his identity or intentions. The Collector’s willingness to do so as part of his plan to enable Noelle’s escape demonstrates the concurrence of humanity’s good and evil. The Collector’s characterization of the other men who participate in the “game” also emphasizes The Corruption Associated With Power and Privilege, as these men see destruction as the ultimate expression of control.

“But for now, the agony of his hand overtook the thrashing emotions inside, and strangely, he was grateful for that.”

After Evan and Noelle’s escape, Evan actually feels grateful for the pain in his smashed hand because it gives him something to focus on other than his turbulent emotions. This implies that the emotional pain of what he’s survived is worse than even excruciating physical pain, providing evidence of just how significant the psychological impact of trauma is.

“She’d never feel clean again. She’d never feel free.”

This description of Noelle also highlights the psychological impact of trauma. Despite a shower, Noelle thinks that she will never feel “clean” after having been raped and psychologically tortured. Her sense of being “dirty” is not literal but metaphorical—an expression of how she feels emotionally and mentally. Noelle feels that her experiences have impacted who she is on a fundamental level.

“It was about survival, a form she hadn’t even known existed. She was trying to save her soul, and she looked in his eyes and knew he was too.”

When Evan and Noelle have sex in the motel, it feels like a step toward healing. Reclaiming their bodies in this way is akin to the shower that each takes. It doesn’t do away with the sexual violence that they’ve survived, but it is an assertion of agency that separates who they are now from who they were when they could only survive. This provides further evidence of the psychological impact of trauma, as well as the bond between the two characters.

“He was no longer caged. But he didn’t know how to stop feeling like he was.”

Evan’s sense of being confined even after the physical confinement has passed reveals the psychological impact of trauma. During his captivity, he had to adjust so dramatically to protect himself from greater suffering that adjusting to freedom feels impossible.

“For the last few days, he’d felt like his face was underwater and all his expressions came out sort of wrong and distorted, like they were being pulled in several different directions by an unseen current.”

When Evan visits Noelle’s house three days after their escape, Sheridan employs another simile that uses water imagery. Evan’s sense that multiple currents are dragging his features in different directions, creating strange and unfamiliar expressions, implies that he doesn’t know how to return to “normal” or how to regain his sense of agency—even over his own body. The shared imagery also links his feelings to Noelle’s, underscoring the bond that has developed between them.

“He felt like she was falling away from him, like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, watching her disappear, not because he’d let her go, but because she wasn’t reaching back.”

At Noelle’s house, Evan reaches for her fingers—as they did in captivity and in the motel afterward—but Noelle does not reach back. Without this symbol of comfort and connection, Evan feels horribly alone. The simile compares her failure to reach out for him to Noelle falling off a cliff, suggesting his sense of powerlessness.

“Her mind had worked her into an emotional tsunami.”

When Noelle and Evan meet in San Francisco a year after their escape, Sheridan uses another water metaphor. While waiting for Evan to arrive, Noelle’s emotions feel like a wave that overwhelms her. When Evan arrives, however, the storm in her heart immediately calms, recalling her sense that his eyes are like an island in the vast ocean.

“They were like wounded warriors who had been through the bloodiest of battles together. They found refuge in each other’s understanding because in many ways their experience was unspeakable. Together, they required no words. But being in each other’s presence also brought with it visions and memories that were easier to bury when that person wasn’t there.”

This simile compares Evan and Noelle to soldiers who bond during a war. Only they can really understand how the other feels as a result of the particular kinds of violence and brutality they endured. They offer each other a disarming blend of comfort and pain because of the trauma they’ve shared, providing further evidence of the psychological impact of trauma.

“A fissure formed in his heart, fibers ripping. He felt it. No one could ever convince him those words didn’t alter his physical self in some measurable way.”

When Evan realizes that Noelle means to say goodbye again, he feels the emotional pain of this separation as though it were physical pain. This example of hyperbole emphasizes how closely emotional and mental trauma are related to physical trauma. His heart is not actually ripping, but the figurative language highlights the truth of how painful it feels to him.

“The true monsters? They’re out there […] And they run in packs. They always run in packs.”

Lars Knauer argues that money turns people into monsters by encouraging them to become entitled and detached from others. He knows that he and Hanh are “throwaways” to the game organizers but rejects the characterization and inverts it, suggesting that it is his abusers who are in some sense not human (the pack metaphor frames them as predatory animals, like wolves).

“Of all the sufferings, his complicated feelings for Noelle were almost the worst.”

Despite the pain of his broken hand and the psychological impact of physical and sexual abuse, Evan is most devastated by not understanding the nature of his feelings for Noelle. Attempting to figure out whether they truly love each other or if they are merely bonded by their shared suffering is torturous, emphasizing another aspect of the psychological impact of trauma: its ability to distort and confuse interpersonal bonds.

“I wanted to sleep with the lights on all night. But my mommy reminded me of the turtles. She said that sometimes the dark is beautiful, and without it, we wouldn’t see the moon.”

Callie speaks to Evan after they watch the baby sea turtles make their way to the ocean. All the local lights have been turned off so that the babies can find their way by following the moon’s light. Evan recognizes the allegorical meaning of Callie’s statement; darkness becomes synonymous with periods of pain, while the moon symbolizes a truth that might not be visible without that suffering. The implication is that the “darkness” of the years in which he and Noelle didn’t see one another has allowed them to find their way back to health and happiness.

“I’ve always come back to the fact that we knew each other. We have a connection through our fathers. I can’t believe that wasn’t known by whoever abducted us.”

In captivity, Noelle figures out a code that she and Evan use to strategize their escape. When they are older, however, it is Evan who puts the pieces together, ascertaining that there is more to their abduction than they assumed. Evan is as smart and perceptive as Noelle and turns out to be right. His nagging concern about their personal history foreshadows their fathers’ involvement in the abductions.

“But he was surprised to find that he cared about the kid dying this way. He’d thought he was beyond caring about anyone or anything.”

Since the death of his daughter, Grim has tried to harden himself against pain and further suffering. This causes him to distance himself from his feelings in a manner similar to that of the men who run the game. However, when faced with Cedro, Grim recognizes the boy’s humanity and value rather than thinking of him as a “throwaway.” This provides further evidence of the corruption associated with power and privilege, distinguishing it from emotional detachment born of trauma.

“He’d half convinced himself that those feelings were all mired in that unhealthy bond Professor Vitucci had talked about, and so to find that he still felt that intensity, minus any current trauma, sent him for a loop.”

Evan struggles to trust his feelings for Noelle, even seven years after their captivity. What he’s learned about shared trauma bonds makes him fear that his feelings reflect their experience rather than actual love. His lingering apprehensiveness highlights the psychological impact of trauma.

“The weird thing is […] the police didn’t believe Lars or Tallulah because of who they are. Their stories were easily dismissed. But we were different. We were noticed. The news showed up. Articles were written. If some sort of choosing was done, why choose two people who would be high profile?”

Evan’s observation that his and Noelle’s abduction was different from everyone else’s eventually leads him to uncover the truth. Thus, it foreshadows the revelation that their fathers were responsible for what happened to them. The passage also draws a subtle parallel between the attitudes of those who play the game and those of society at large; like the game’s organizers, society treats certain people as less than human due to their class, personal history, etc.