51 pages • 1-hour read
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death, graphic violence, harassment, emotional abuse, and cursing.
The Unnamed Caller
Throughout the course of the novel, Brooke is harassed by repeated calls from a withheld number that appears as “No Caller ID.” These calls are a motif that reinforces the danger Brooke is in of someone discovering her secret. The calls are so intrusive that she is forced to keep her phone on airplane mode. The motif of the calls serves a narrative purpose. Often, a plot beat of rising tension is preceded by Brooke checking her phone and finding that she has a large number of missed calls from “No Caller ID.” The calls are unblockable; neither she nor her coverage provider can stop them from coming through, and when Brooke changes her number, the caller quickly figures it out and begins their harassment anew.
The calls serve as a constant reminder of the night of Claire’s drowning and acts as a metaphor for Brooke’s guilt, like the heartbeat under the floorboards in Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In that story, the heartbeat is an illusion created by the protagonist’s guilty conscience that tortures him until he confesses. Brooke doesn’t have a conscience, so the force driving her to confess must be external—in this case, it’s her friends calling her anonymously. The calls don’t achieve their goal, leading the friends to escalate their measures.
Yale University
When readers are introduced to Brooke, her only concern is getting into Yale. Her entire life has been oriented around turning herself into the perfect applicant: she works hard to get the grades, and she takes part in a wide range of extracurricular activities that are dictated by her mother. Brooke’s parents hold her to the expectation that she will get in, as generations of their family have attended the university. Thus, Yale symbolizes Brooke and the Goodwin family’s ambitions, which to them are more important than anything or anyone else.
For Brooke, Yale is not just an ambition—it’s an identity. She has no other personal goals or desires. After the accident, she becomes even more fixated on being accepted into Yale because it’s the only thing that can redeem her in her parents’ eyes. Early in the book, Brooke comments that were it not for the accident, she’d already know if she’d been accepted because she could’ve applied earlier. Her ambition to get into Yale supersedes any guilt or compassion she feels for Claire’s death. Later, it’s revealed that Claire surpassed Brooke socially and academically at Waldorf, threatening her superiority as a candidate for the university. This is in part why Brooke and her father conspired to have Mr. Heck disbarred. With Claire out of Waldorf, Brooke had one less obstacle to her college admission. When she does get accepted, Brooke is overjoyed and sees it as the salvation of her relationship with her parents.
However, later Brooke realizes that she doesn’t know what she will do once she gets to Yale. Yale was always just an achievement for its own sake, a symbol of how she needs her life to look good at all costs, and she doesn’t have an individual identity that could help her decide what she’d actually want to study. Her confession and arrest destroy the possibility of her attending Yale, and since Brooke has no real direction in life, she has no goals or identity to take its place.
The Goodwin Family Name
Brooke’s family, the Goodwins, are a wealthy and powerful family in Salem. Her mother is Waldorf’s principal, and her father is a senior lawyer. He is running for a judge position, and the review process for the job requires ensuring that he and his family are in good standing. Mr. Goodwin does not condemn Brooke for murdering Claire because it is immoral; rather, he is furious that her actions threaten his professional aims. He has connections in law enforcement and is willing to pull strings to preserve the Goodwin name.
The name itself is symbolic: “good” and “win” are the family’s only goals. For them, the only way to be good or worthwhile is to win. Even before Claire’s death, Brooke feels the burden of expectation behind the Goodwin name. She repeats maxims to herself about the correct behavior for a Goodwin: “Goodwins don’t get to fall apart” (10); “Goodwins are always composed” (23); “Goodwins don’t cause a scene” (66). The Goodwin name hangs over every choice Brooke makes, cementing itself as a symbol of Brooke’s social and emotional restrictions. She envies Jena for coming from a less prestigious family, free from the burden of legacy—but she also looks down on her. The Goodwin name gives Brooke a superiority complex. It makes Brooke insecure and narcissistic, able to rationalize and unethical decisions, including murder. In the end, Brooke’s actions aren’t “good” and she doesn’t “win,” proving that name and legacy aren’t destiny.
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