54 pages • 1-hour read
Stolen Tongues
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section includes discussion of child death and death by suicide.
Grief
Grief is a central motif in the text, helping to bind the characters who experience the Imposter’s malevolent influence while at the cabin. The cabin’s backstory provides an important clue to what lies beneath Faye and Felix’s own disturbing experiences. Lynn explains that the couple who sold the cabin to the Spencers, Tom and Jennifer, retreated to the cabin after the death of their daughter. While staying there, Jennifer began to experience terrible nightmares and believed her daughter was calling her from the woods. Although the couple moved away from the cabin to escape these problems, Tom ultimately died by suicide while Henry, Jennifer’s second husband, tells Felix that Jennifer was never fully mentally well again.
Faye and her family are also tied by grief to the Imposter, although this is not revealed to Faye and Felix until close to the novel’s end. When Faye was very young, Lynn gave birth to a stillborn son. Faye was confused by the death and did not know how to process her feelings, so her parents took her to the cabin for a break. While there, Faye became disturbed by the Imposter the same way Jennifer had been years before. In returning to the cabin as an adult, her odd behavior while asleep—especially her fixation on the number “5”—alludes to the grief for her brother she has long buried deep in her unconscious. In this way, grief becomes the unifying emotion between the characters who become vulnerable to the Imposter, which suggests that the Imposter is indeed drawn to sites and individuals who are associated with suffering.
The Number “5”
The significance of the number “5” is a mystery throughout much of the text, becoming a key symbol. Felix is confused by the fact that the number seems so important to Faye, and so crucial to the Impostor who needs to understand its meaning to fully unlock her mind, and yet she cannot remember why. When Lynn reveals the existence of her unborn son, Christopher, who died in utero, as well as Faye’s inability to deal with her grief over the loss of her baby brother, the meaning of “5” is revealed. Faye pores over the scrapbook she and Lynn made to celebrate the pregnancy, finally telling Felix, “I never got to see him […]. That number was how I always thought of him. Christopher was going to be the fifth member of our family” (270). Thus, “5” is both a symbol of Christopher, the missing fifth family member, as well as the power of Faye’s unconscious mind to hide something that causes her such pain.
In the end, Felix says that Faye repressed the pain of Christopher’s loss so completely that “The number five became the lockbox in which he was hidden. The coffin she buried him in. And she buried him so deep that she couldn’t even dream of him anymore” (295), and this is why the Impostor can never gain access to “what makes five” (257). In telling the Impostor what “5” means, Faye empowers herself and disempowers the creature, leaving “nothing […] for the creature to grab onto” in her mind (296).
Faye’s Engagement Ring
When Felix and Faye go to the cabin, it’s to celebrate their recent engagement. He has recently presented her with a ring that belonged to his grandmother, and though he “never met her, […] it was really special to [his] mom” (192). It’s never revealed whether Faye lost the ring, the creature stole it, or if she gave it to the Impostor, as Tíwé suggests. Tíwé says that the ring is “very special [….]. And the Impostor knows it. It symbolizes [Felix and Faye’s] unity and love for each other. It’s a powerful object, a bit like a totem” (192). Tíwé describes a totem as something that connects the material world to the spiritual one, suggesting that the love shared between two people—and any object that represents this love—can do the same. This could be why the creature keeps the ring, and why Faye is so reluctant to tell Felix that she lost it.
One of the first questions Angela asks Felix and Faye when they meet is if they’ve recently lost anything meaningful. This reaffirms the importance of physical objects that symbolize spiritual states, as the ring does, and it also explains why the Impostor would use it to lure Felix to destroy the totem in the woods that seems to offer some measure of protection. Nothing else would be important or meaningful enough that Felix would disregard the advice of everyone who told him not to touch the item in the tree. Finally, he says, “Angela has advised us to get rid of [the ring] for fear that it could be cursed. But to Faye, that ring symbolizes everything we’ve been through, and she refuses to part with such a meaningful thing” (297, emphasis added). Thus, the engagement symbolizes the strength of the love between Felix and Faye.
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