54 pages • 1-hour read
Stolen Tongues
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of anti-Indigenous racism, suicidal ideation, and death.
The Complications of Love and Intimacy
While Stolen Tongues is largely centered on a horror plot, it also features a romantic relationship at its emotional core. Felix and Faye first visit the cabin together shortly after they become engaged, with their experiences with the Imposter quickly putting their love and commitment to the test. Through their fraught dynamic, the novel explores the complications of love and intimacy.
Felix and Faye clearly love one another, but the novel suggests from early on that they are not always as close or as trusting of one another as they first seem. Felix tends to frame his relationship with Faye as one between a masculine protector and a feminine dependent, which both drives his emotional investment in trying to shield her from the Imposter and threatens to undermine their true emotional intimacy. Felix behaves toward Faye in a way that sometimes becomes paternalistic and possessive, with Felix even resenting the fact that Faye’s “nature was to be very protective of her inner thoughts and feelings” (101), as he feels Faye having her own private inner life thwarts his efforts to know—and direct—what is going on with the Imposter. More problematically, he is quick to suspect Faye of dishonesty, such as when he complains, “I couldn’t tell which of them [Lynn or Faye] was the liar. Perhaps they both were” (111). Thus, Felix’s desire to be powerful and protective, and his inability to take Faye on her own terms, speaks to a tension at the heart of their dynamic—one that exposes them to the Imposter as their intimacy fractures.
Felix’s unthinking desire to be the protector also threatens the very aspect of their love that proves the most effective weapon against the Imposter: The way they can help and protect one another as equals. As Tíwé warns Felix, “don’t get so caught up in protecting her that you forget—she’s protecting you too’” (113, emphasis added). Later events in the narrative reveal the accuracy of Tíwé’s observation: While the Imposter can never fully enter the cabin or directly threaten Felix so long as Faye is also there, Felix becomes far more vulnerable once he returns to the cabin alone. He discovers that thinking of Faye tends to frustrate and repel the Imposter, while retrieving her engagement ring successfully lessens her nightmares and disturbed behavior even while she waits for his return back in California. The power of their connection thus proves to be the key to successfully resisting the Imposter’s attempts to divide them and take over Faye completely.
The novel’s end reinforces the importance of the love between Felix and Faye by casting Faye—and not Felix—as the ultimately successful protector. It is Faye who decides to summon the Imposter deliberately, and who realizes how to defeat him. She decides to do so when she realizes how badly the situation is now affecting Felix as well as herself, which implies that it is her love for her fiancé that gives her the necessary courage and strength to face down the Imposter and free them both from his grasp. This outcome suggests that Felix and Faye’s greatest resource against the malevolent force has always been their love, but that they can only succeed when both have a role to play.
The Problem of Explaining the Supernatural Through Appropriated Folklore
The cabin the Imposter lurks around is located in Colorado, in a region filled with difficult history of violence against Indigenous peoples by white settlers. While Felix and Faye are vaguely aware of the Indigenous peoples in the area, they only begin to take Indigenous beliefs seriously when they start to experience the supernatural phenomenon at the cabin. The Indigenous elements in the text reflect the problem of explaining the supernatural through appropriated folklore.
When the story begins, Felix describes the culturally insensitive stance the tourism industry takes on the region’s Indigenous groups. He talks about the difficulty of “finding portrayals of Natives as anything other than fantastical heroes or mysterious savages” (17). Local whites and tourism brochures describe “mysterious Indians who performed rituals and fought with cowboys, then vanished altogether […] But that enthusiasm for all things Native American, however commercial, really does make the land itself feel alive and humming with memory” (17-18). Thus, Felix acknowledges the prejudicial nature of the racial caricatures used to sell trinkets and experiences, then turns around and describes how “magical” they nonetheless make the area feel. Indigenous folklore is treated in much the same way. Felix knows—in very vague terms—what a dreamcatcher is, but not what it represents or even which Indigenous groups make them.
This superficial recognition is furthered by the introduction of Tíwé and Nathan, two local, Indigenous men who are father and son. Felix never identifies their Indigenous community, nor does Tíwé’s friend, Angela, ever get a last name. Likewise, Felix does acknowledge the awkwardness he feels in asking Tíwé for help, saying, “I felt a little weird calling you […]. Is it wrong of me to ask you for help with…uh…whatever this is? Isn’t it a bit like asking a random Chinese guy to teach me kung fu?” (83). Tíwé doesn’t mind helping, which he says makes Felix’s request acceptable, but even Felix’s question provides evidence of the problem. Kung fu is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of martial arts that have developed over centuries; asking to be taught “kung fu” is similar to asking to be taught “Native folklore.” The very question indicates how superficial one’s understanding of the subject is, treating other complex cultures as a monolith.
The narrative itself does little to challenge such stereotypes or problematic tropes, as Felix’s understanding of the Indigenous culture in the region remains superficial and entirely self-serving. Felix doesn’t feel compelled to do a deep dive into the folklore of the specific Indigenous tribes in the area; he’s content to allow Tíwé and Nathan to explain a miniscule segment of their cultural beliefs—historical and contemporary—so he can feel he has a minimal grasp on what he and Faye are facing. Then, when the threat has passed, he is content to “sto[p] trying to understand” (297). It is as easy to put down as it was to pick up because his understanding was never nuanced or rich, while the Indigenous characters are simply killed off or dismissed in the narrative as soon as they are no longer needed.
The Impacts of Isolation and Sleep Deprivation
The cabin in Stolen Tongues quickly becomes a site of nightmarish incidents for Faye and Felix, which are exacerbated by the isolated locale and the worsening state of Faye’s sleep disorder. As the couple struggles to remain in control of their mental states and the situation, the novel examines the impacts of isolation and sleep deprivation.
It doesn’t take long after the Impostor’s appearance in Felix and Faye’s life for Felix to start suffering the consequences of sleep deprivation. He says, “I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days, or maybe weeks; I couldn’t even remember anymore. Tendrils of insanity were slowly wrapping around my neck, squeezing off the blood to my brain” (108). Lack of sleep, even for a relatively short amount of time, affects his memory and mental clarity. Soon, he begins to feel that he cannot even trust his ability to reason anymore, and he forgets to do things, like letting Tíwé know that he’s on his way back to Colorado. He worries that if he takes Faye back to the doctor, they’ll both be considered mentally ill if they describe what they’re experiencing. Felix also repeatedly states that the sleeplessness and mental confusion worsen his emotional alienation from Faye, suggesting that the couple’s isolation and difficult circumstances are pulling them apart instead of drawing them closer together.
Further, both Felix and Faye begin experiencing suicidal ideation, developing a belief that death would be a welcome relief, preferable to their present pain and distress. While he’s alone in the cabin, hoping to find a way to protect Faye, Felix says, “The delirium of terror and insomnia stole my balance and blurred my vision” (161), leaving him prone to suicidal ideation. Likewise, as he and Faye become more alienated from one another, Felix struggles not to blame her for the events that cause her own anguish and grief. In response, she tells Felix, “I’m exhausted […]. I feel like I can’t fight [the creature] anymore. I wish he’d just end it” (231). They have been so energetically depleted by fear and its effects that it begins to destroy their will to live.
Faye and Felix eventually resolve their sleeplessness and despair by confronting the Imposter and drawing closer to one another in spite of their struggles. Since the Imposter feeds on dreams, not thoughts, to manipulate his intended victims, Faye and Felix gradually unlock how Faye’s sleep disorder is actually providing clues into the hidden childhood tragedy—the stillbirth of her brother—that the Imposter seeks to exploit. Faye then confronts the Imposter while wide awake, depriving him of his usual power and banishing him from their lives—and their sleep—forever.
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