63 pages • 2-hour read
Don't Let Him In
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Symbols & Motifs
Façades
Throughout the novel, characters learn that their understanding of the people in their lives is incomplete, realizing that even those closest to them can have a façade that hides their true selves. This motif helps to support the text’s theme of The Universality of Vulnerability to Scams by demonstrating how common it is for people to only partially understand one another—a phenomenon that can easily be exploited by a con artist like Nick. The chief example of the power of facades centers on Nick himself. Each of the women he targets initially believes him to be a charming, sincere, hard-working man with the best of intentions. They also believe that they know his authentic self fully. Gradually, each learns that Nick is a callous, self-centered, and dangerous man whose primary aim is to separate her from her money. Throughout the novel, the revelations about façades highlight how one’s understanding of another, even someone close, can change dramatically when the façade is stripped away.
Another significant example of this shifting understanding happens when Ash learns that Jane is a smart, capable woman with a generous heart—not the somewhat unbalanced woman that her parents have portrayed. Nina learns a parallel lesson about Ash late in the story, when she realizes that she has been underestimating Ash’s judgment and abilities. The novel even promotes this idea through the way the narrative is structured. Because the third-person narrator largely focuses on Ash’s perspective, Paddy and Nina are at first portrayed only as Ash sees them; later, however, Nick’s narration reveals that both Paddy and Nina were having affairs before Paddy died, and, in Chapter 61, Nina’s conversation with Nick reveals other new and troubling aspects of Paddy’s personality. Nina also provides new insight into Ash’s personality during this conversation, and these revelations shift understanding of Ash’s character and the limitations of her objectivity when it comes to Nina and Paddy, highlighting how even the closest relationships are limited by the façades of those involved.
The Zippo Lighter
The copper Zippo lighter that Nick sends to Nina is a symbol of how adept he is at his con, highlighting The Insidious Nature of Psychological Manipulation. Like many of Nick’s other gifts to the women in his life, the lighter he sends Nina seems to be a solid, tangible artifact of his good intentions and kind nature. It speaks to Nina’s deepest desires by bridging the gap between her old life, before Paddy’s death, and her new life as a widow. It seems to be a piece of Paddy’s life that she can continue to hold on to, but it is sent by a new man who seems to offer her future happiness.
The fact that Nick appears to possess this piece of Paddy’s life and is willing to offer it to Nina suggests that he is a generous person who already “belongs” to Nina’s world—he seems more like a long-lost friend than a random stranger, and he can be trusted. As with most of Nick’s gifts, the meanings that appear to attach to the lighter are just a carefully crafted illusion. When someone skeptical comes along—in this case, Jane—the illusion dissipates, and reality is revealed: The lighter did not belong to Paddy, and Nick is not his old friend. It isn’t a symbol of Nick’s trustworthiness or his connection to Nina’s life but a symbol of Nick’s ability to offer whatever his target needs to gain entry to their life.
The Pink Boxes
The pink boxes function as a symbol of both the women’s vulnerabilities to Nick’s manipulations and the community of support they form to defeat him. The pink color of the boxes, their floral logo, and the scented soaps within associate the boxes with stereotypes of femininity and thus the novel’s female characters. At first, Nick is able to exploit the women’s stereotypically feminine qualities, and he gains entry into Nina’s life through a pink box containing the Zippo lighter. Nina shows the politeness and concern for others’ feelings seen by society as intrinsic to femininity—instead of ignoring or rejecting Nick’s intrusion, she thanks him for the gesture and enters into a correspondence. This first pink box is so attractive to Ash that she keeps it to store her mementos in. She is so taken in by its appearance that she wants to use it to house the trinkets that represent her identity and memories, symbolically trapping a part of herself inside Nick’s machinations. This first pink box is a key illustration of Nick’s ability to read and manipulate women as it infiltrates both women’s lives.
Ironically, the same pink boxes eventually become a key piece of evidence that allows the women to band together to expose Nick. Nick steals these boxes from Martha’s Garden, following his usual pattern of taking one woman’s resources to court the next. When Nick gives Ash some scented soaps in another pink box, she recognizes the same box in Marcelline’s possession and can solicit Marcelline’s help in tracking its provenance. This leads Ash to Martha and to key revelations about Nick’s identity and past. The pink boxes become a tangible connection among the various women in Nick’s life and lead indirectly to the formation of the group that will eventually confront him on the Bangate beach. In the beginning, the novel utilizes the pink boxes to point out how women’s socialization can be used to exploit them, but by the end, the same boxes have drawn the women together and represent their communal strength, demonstrating The Importance of Women Helping Other Women.
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