70 pages • 2-hour read
Hunting Adeline
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Themes
The Effect of Trauma on Relationships
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes descriptions of gender and/or transgender discrimination, sexual violence and/or harassment, rape, mental illness, child abuse, suicidal ideation and/or self-harm, graphic violence, sexual content, death, physical abuse, and emotional abuse.
The first part of Hunting Adeline, in which Adeline and Zade are separated and traumatized, emphasizes the effect that trauma has on a person’s self-esteem. Both Adeline and Zade see themselves as damaged or tarnished to the point that they are no longer worthy of their partner’s love. However, the memory of their relationship is also a powerful force of hope and resilience, with Zade hearing Adeline’s voice, and Adeline hearing Zade’s encouraging voice in her darkest moments. In the van on the way to Francesca’s house, Adeline hears Zade telling her to hold on, and she thinks, “[I]t feels so real. So soothing, that I fight to stay where I can hear him” (7). Even as Zade and Adeline fear that their trauma will affect their relationship, they cling to one another across the distance between them, using the memory of love to sustain themselves.
In Part 2, Carlton intensifies the novel’s examination of trauma’s long-term effects, for even Zade and Adeline’s reunion fails to erase their trauma, and Adeline remains haunted by Xavier’s violent abuse. Even though her initial reunion with Zade is full of hope, recovery is not an easy process for Adeline. Weeks after Adeline’s rescue, she tells Daya, “[E]very time [Zade] touches me, I want to enjoy it. I just can’t” (375). In Haunting Adeline, Adeline enjoyed rough sex with Zade, often crossing into questionable areas of consent and morality. Now, after experiencing the abuses of human trafficking, Adeline struggles to regain her identity and sexuality. In this sense, trauma threatens to undo the progress that Adeline and Zade made in their relationship in the first novel, but love and dedication gradually break down the barriers built by that trauma.
As Zade learns more about Adeline’s trauma, Adeline starts to confront her conflicted feelings of anger, sadness, and emptiness, and both characters process their emotions in new ways. As Zade notes, “Learning to accept my own scars was a process, and one I faced alone. […] Scars only serve as reminders of what we’ve survived, not what killed us” (512). While Zade is referring to the physical scars that both he and Adeline bear, he is also highlighting the fact that partners can help each other to overcome the mental and emotional scars left by traumatic experiences. This is why Zade makes new cuts over Adeline’s scars; in his own twisted way, he is attempting to replace the memory of Xavier with the unconventional form of love that Zade and Adeline share. The two also slowly push the boundaries of their sexual relationship, allowing Adeline to regain her former sense of comfort with her sexuality. Although the traumatic experiences of Part 1 threaten to tear Adeline and Zade apart, their love and dedication allow them to communicate, progress, and heal over the course of Part 2.
Hierarchies of Power and Agency
Hunting Adeline is inherently a novel about power structures, and Carlton extensively examines the ways in which individuals interact within the hierarchies of their social and professional circles, even though the “profession” in question is illegal. For example, when Claire confronts Zade at the beginning of the novel, she tells him, “We’re all hypocrites, Z […] The only difference between you and me is that I chose to profit off the pathetic men in this world” (22). Claire claims that Zade’s livelihood is also dependent on human trafficking; by building his identity around the attempts to thwart human trafficking, he paradoxically holds a place in the hierarchy of the underworld, even if he tries to keep himself separate from it. Like Claire, Zade has seen himself as the highest-ranking person in the fight against human trafficking, but his direct confrontation with the Society reveals that he has been fighting the underlings of Claire’s world, and he must rethink his strategy in order to climb Claire’s hierarchy and gain access to her.
Through Adeline and Zade’s perspectives, Carlton outlines how the human trafficking organization is built, as well as how it can be destroyed. In Francesca’s house, Adeline learns about the hierarchical structure that Zade is accustomed to attacking. Francesca is at the top with Rocco, and men like Jerry and Rio are placed just below them. The captive women, of course, languish at the bottom of this abusive hierarchical structure. Rio clarifies this paradigm for Adeline, telling her, “Everything is your fault here […] Don’t ever forget that” (128). Later, Rio reveals that he, too, is lower in the hierarchy than Adeline anticipated. The Culling opens the hierarchy to Adeline’s scrutiny, and she realizes that even Francesca holds a lower status than she expected, given that “customers” like Xavier hold a considerable degree of power. Francesca acknowledges this fact during the Culling, saying, “For centuries, we’ve carried on this tradition. In our world, only the strongest can survive” (242). Her comment ties the ideas of wealth, power, and strength together in justifying the hierarchy. It therefore follows that Claire, is the “strongest” figure in the Society, ranking even above Xavier.
By contrast, when Zade seeks to infiltrate the Society, he is forced to climb the ladder of the Society’s hierarchy from the bottom up, taking out contractors like Garrison and attacking auctions and transports rather than targeting the people in control. Only after tackling the lower rungs of the Society can Zade begin to target the more central players, like Xavier and Claire. In the end, Zade and Adeline realize the true nature of Claire’s hierarchy, noting, “[S]he is as weak as the shield she hides behind. Forced to use others to protect herself because she’s incapable of doing it herself” (648). In this context, Claire’s position at the top of the hierarchy is not representative of innate strength or ability; by stripping away the layers of protection and violence that support Claire, Zade leaves her with no way of stopping him from taking over. However, after defeating Claire, Zade does not take her place, preferring instead to continue attacking the structures of power that enable and execute human trafficking.
The Unique Struggles Facing Women
While most of the characters in Hunting Adeline experience some form of trauma, the women in the novel are subjected to specific violence and abuse that has an entirely different tone when compared to the trauma of their male counterparts. The greatest evidence for this theme’s relevance in the text can be found in the inhabitants of Zade’s sanctuaries, of which Adeline notes, “All of them are kids or women that I can see” (343). While men can be and are survivors of sexual assault and trafficking, the author’s exploration of sexual abuse and violence is centered on women and children, who are most often targeted for these crimes. In Francesca’s house, though Rio is also a survivor, he does not suffer the same public, violent, and humiliating abuse that Adeline and the other women do. A central element of this theme is objectification, the perception that a group of people do not have agency or autonomy.
The most direct objectification in the novel appears in Xavier’s gross mistreatment Adeline. As Adeline observes, “He wants me to writhe beneath the piercing metal and get off on the pain as he does. […] [W]hen he sees that I’m not, it makes him angry” (248). Xavier’s insistence on using Adeline’s body as a tool for his pleasure and on controlling her behavior highlight his view of her as nothing more than a toy. Xavier pictures Adeline as a doll with a cord-activated voice box, and when he pulls the cord and hears something other than pleasure, he becomes enraged. Adeline explicitly compares Xavier’s view of her to that of a boy owning a toy, but the Culling adds another dimension to the objectification of the women in Francesca’s house, given that Xavier literally hunts Adeline, removing her agency and autonomy. Additionally, Adeline repeatedly reflects that her value as an object is tied to the perception that she is Zade’s property, and her view highlights the patriarchal, societal view of woman as property, even in the absence of abuse.
Adeline is not the only woman who faces these abuses, as both Daya and Francesca’s roles in the novel are designed to show that women face the threat of abuse even in situations that might appear safe. For example, Luke uses Daya to access her phone, tricking Adeline into leaving her house, but he tacks on the additional abuse of sexually assaulting Daya and holding her hostage. Max describes this abuse by claiming that Luke is “reliving his favorite memory with her” (81), implying that regardless of consent, Luke sees Daya’s body as an object to use. Notably, Carlton’s depiction suggests that even women who hold positions of power within systems of abuse are not immune, as demonstrated by Francesca. Sydney tells Adeline, “[Rocco] wanted to punish you for it, and you know what she did? She took the punishment for you instead” (162). Even though Francesca is the boss of her home, alongside Rocco, her brother, her status in the hierarchy does not prevent her from experiencing abuse, just like the women she imprisons.
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