50 pages • 1-hour read
All the Little Raindrops
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, rape, emotional abuse, and physical abuse.
The Concurrence of Humanity’s Good and Evil
The extreme, violent “game” at the novel’s center affords characters opportunities to act on both their worst and best impulses. In the opening chapters, for example, Noelle’s selfless protection of Evan contrasts starkly with the sadism of the game’s spectators. However, the dichotomy is internal as well as external, with characters like Bennett Meyer and Dr. Caspar Vitucci demonstrating how good and evil can coexist within the same person.
Noelle’s father was a dedicated and faithful husband who pursued justice for his murdered wife at all costs but also gave in to his own corrupt desire for revenge. Worse still, his plan targeted not Sinclair himself but the man’s innocent son. When Noelle finds the evidence that must have prompted her father’s terrible decisions, she wonders, “How long had he stewed, allowing the open wound to become a gaping sore that he fell into, melding with the rot? Becoming it. Morphing into the very monster he despised” (329). In reality, however, Meyer never fully transformed into a “monster”; when he confronted the reality of Evan’s captivity, he “immediately regretted what he had done” (349). Though this regret came too late to change anything, it speaks to Meyer’s complex moral character.
Dr. Vitucci’s character illustrates the coexistence of good and evil even more clearly, as his moral and immoral actions are often interdependent. Like Meyer, Vitucci acts principally from a desire for revenge, though unlike Meyer, Vitucci targets the game’s organizers directly. He does so, however, in a way that implicates him in the same system. For example, he tells Evan and Noelle that he’s done “many favors” to prove his loyalty to Sinclair and the corrupt police; he says, “I’ve made files disappear, hid evidence. All toward an ultimate end, but even so” (353). He admits that he hid evidence in Sinclair’s trial, helping to ensure that the murderer walked away a free man. Even as he works toward his ultimate goal, Vitucci strives to do what good he can: He spends much of his life helping individuals like Evan heal from trauma, and he intervenes in the game itself to help participants escape. He doesn’t try to help everyone, though; he only helps those who refuse to sacrifice others to protect themselves. He thus emerges as a highly ambiguous figure—a mixture of “evil and goodness, revenge and righteousness” who shows humanity at both its best and its worst (369).
The Corruption Associated With Power and Privilege
When Vitucci arrives at the final party, he thinks of the game’s organizers, “The world was their playground, and for them, nothing was unavailable […] What spoke of your own power even more strongly than possession? Destruction. True kings not only invaded. They pillaged too” (357). His reflections frame power as inherently corrosive. It is not merely that money and privilege distance those who possess them from their fellow human beings, rendering them less capable of empathy; power finds its ultimate expression in destruction.
The game itself is the novel’s primary example of this. The men who play it are gratified by the feeling of power, and nothing gives them this feeling more than possessing and, in many cases, destroying other people. When the Collector tells Noelle the story of the man who likes to collect people, he says that the man wants them for “[s]ex. Violence. But mostly, he t[akes] them for power. All those half-drugged girls, naked and draped in gems. They ma[k]e him feel like a king” (64). This feeling of power becomes a vicious cycle, as it insulates those who wield it more and more from any sense of shared humanity. This is evident, for example, in the kind of people the game targets: “Humans who’d never be missed. Throwaways like [Grim and Cedro]” (231). To those who play the game, the caged humans are so far below them as to hardly be human at all; they are simply “throwaways” whose maiming, rape, etc. furnishes evidence of the players’ power.
Further, these men’s wealth and access to power mean that they can indulge virtually any desire: They can afford to pay off the judges, the law enforcement, and anyone else who might otherwise stand in their way. Thus, when Vitucci thinks of the massacre, he knows just what happened: “Their privilege happened. Their egos happened. Their gluttony spilled over. Those men made all the rules, they always had. One big club of influence and power” (345). With no guardrails, such men are free to become monsters.
However, in a final, ironic twist, power also destroys those who possess it. Van Daele’s and Sinclair’s privilege makes them think that they are untouchable, and this is what helps Vitucci exact his revenge. At the final party, he thinks, “They could buy their way out of anything. Or so they believed. But they had missed something. Eventually they always did, because they thought themselves invincible” (359). Ultimately, their privilege and power lead to their own destruction.
The Psychological Impact of Trauma
Evan and Noelle’s feelings after they escape captivity show just how significantly trauma impacts those who experience it. Though the physical danger has passed, they continue to feel threatened and tormented by their memories in ways that affect even (and especially) their own relationship. While the resolution of their storyline suggests that healing is possible, the characters remain permanently changed by their experiences.
The novel juxtaposes physical and psychological wounds to suggest the staying power of the latter. While in captivity, Evan promises Noelle that they will do everything they can to “stay whole” physically, but both intuit that this may not be possible psychologically. When Evan considers this promise, “it occur[s] to him that they’d already begun to be carved up. Noelle [is] no longer whole” (47). Their bodies might remain intact, but experiences such as Noelle’s rape do psychological damage. For her part, Noelle thinks “that appearing ‘whole’ from the outside could be misleading” (53). She sacrificed her sexual safety to protect Evan, leading to a physical violation that she can never mentally escape.
Sure enough, Evan and Noelle feel the effects of their captivity long after it has ended, leading to changes in outlook and behavior. Noelle says that she’ll “never feel safe again” (125), and Evan begins carrying a weapon in case he needs to defend himself. Evan also experiences confusion about his feelings and his relationship with Noelle. He tells Vitucci, “It was like we were desperate to be together, but also desperate to be apart” (183), and it takes several years of separation for him to feel sure that what he feels is, in fact, love rather than the bonds of shared trauma.
That Evan and Noelle do enter a relationship illustrates both the durability of trauma and the possibility of working through it productively. The fact that they are now able to spend time together without stirring up painful memories speaks to how much they have healed from their experiences. Symbolically, however, their relationship is itself the product of trauma—they would never have grown close without it—and thus underscores trauma’s ability to fundamentally alter the lives of those it touches. Meanwhile, characters like Vitucci serve as foils to the novel’s central couple. Vitucci has spent his entire life grappling with the trauma he experienced as a child but ultimately chooses the desire for revenge over the possibility of love and life, reminding readers that trauma does not always resolve cleanly.
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