Appetite for Innocence

Lucinda Berry’s novel explores how extreme trauma complicates conventional notions of innocence and victimhood, suggesting that survival is rarely a pure act of heroism but often one of moral compromise. Characters are forced into ethically gray areas where the lines between victim, survivor, and accomplice become blurred. The narrative argues that in situations of profound duress, survival itself becomes a morally complex act that defies simple judgment.

Sarah’s character embodies this moral ambiguity. Initially a victim, she adapts to her captivity by becoming her captor’s accomplice, a role that grants her a precarious form of privilege within the basement’s hierarchy. This transition is rooted in her own history of abuse, which primes her to accept a new, albeit twisted, form of stability. She enforces her captor Derek’s rules, rationalizing her complicity as a necessary evil to prevent worse outcomes, telling herself that the other girls “don’t know what it used to be like or how much worse it can get” (27). Her actions are not born of inherent malice but from a desperate, deeply ingrained survival instinct that prioritizes her own safety by participating in the subjugation of others.

The novel further complicates this theme by contrasting different survival strategies, none of which are without moral cost.