45 pages • 1-hour read
Ruthless Creatures
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual violence, emotional abuse, and sexual content.
Predation
The motif of predator and prey underpins Nat’s relationships with her male romantic interests Kage, David, and Chris. Although Chris is a sheriff whose job is to police potential predators, he abuses the power conferred on him by his position to harass, stalk, and otherwise intimidate Nat after their breakup. Nat characterizes his behavior as “stalkerish” (331)—a description confirmed by the fact that Chris sexually assaults her in a bid to get her back.
The seemingly mild-mannered David is revealed to be a different kind of predator—one that latches on to women until he no longer needs them. He marries and abandons Claudia, gets engaged to and then disappears on Nat, and rushes into a hasty second (possibly bigamous) marriage in Panama. Although Nat does not portray David as preying on her, the readers come away viewing him as a manipulative user.
Finally, as an avowed criminal, Kage begins the novel as the most straightforward kind of predator: He has been sent to Lake Tahoe to interrogate, torture, and kill Nat. To do this, he stakes her out by buying the house next door and “watching [her] like a hunter peering at a doe through the sights of a rifle” (76). However, Kage’s form of predatory behavior is soon transformed into courtship; Nat’s desire for him allows her to gloss over the revelation of his original purpose: While she worries that “[i]nstead of being a good assassin and shooting [her] in the head then dumping [her] into the lake, he thought it would be fun to make [her] fall in love with him first” (579), Kage counters her doubts by declaring, “I was never playing you, baby. I loved you from day one” (580).
Color Imagery
As a code to communicate and ensure consent, Kage’s color system adds nuance to the theme of The Irrationality of Sexual Desire, symbolizing both the willingness to be sexually adventurous and the use of restraint to respect a partner’s boundaries. Kage tells Nat, “Say ‘red’ and I’ll stop. If you get uncomfortable but aren’t sure if you want me to stop yet, say ‘yellow.’ If you like something, say ‘green’” (409). The device is the novel’s way of combining its depiction of overwhelming passion with its firm and explicit depiction of consent. Even as Kage pushes Nat to explore sexual acts that she has never tried, he delivers so much pleasure that Nat responds, “Green. Super ultra-mega green” (413), showcasing her enthusiasm.
However idealized the portrayal of Kage and Nat’s sex life, the introduction of the color system also supports the theme of Distinguishing Conflict and Abuse. The words “red” and “yellow” indicate that Nat might not always like what Kage does; it is Nat’s responsibility to be aware of and communicate that she wants “to stop” or is growing “uncomfortable,” just as it is Kage’s job to stay mindful to prevent the tension from turning into harm. The option of refusal presents disagreement as a normal part of sex and the process of consent.
Mystery Clues
One of the novel’s subplots is a mystery: the disappearance of Nat’s fiancé, David, five years earlier. While most of the narrative is concerned with Nat’s growing romance with Kage, it also follows several investigations into what happened to David. To support this element of the narrative, the novel introduces several objects to serve as clues—a motif that echoes traditional detective fiction.
The police are depicted as inept; they are unable to find any evidence about David’s vanishing, leading Sloane to suspect that he fell to his death while hiking. The Bratva’s search for David involves maneuvers that stereotype the reach and inexorable nature of criminal organizations. The syndicate is shown to have infiltrated the federal government to gain access to WITSEC records and send an enforcer to torture a potential accomplice for information.
In contrast, Nat encounters a series of clues that hearken to the golden age of the detective genre: an unlabeled key that Nat traces to a secret safe deposit box, a coded letter from David that points to a hidden message concealed in one of her paintings, and a letter left at a hotel addressed to a movie character whom David assumes Nat would remember. The gentle, cozy-mystery vibe of these items lightens the atmosphere around David’s disappearance, setting readers up for the reveal that he is still alive. It also belies David’s true nature: While he is not shown to be physically violent, as these objects confirm, he is a deceptive and manipulative person who uses and discards women.
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