69 pages • 2-hour read
Tell Me What You Did
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Symbols & Motifs
Poe’s Dreams
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussions of stalking, substance abuse, and overdose.
Since her mother’s murder, Poe has been plagued by nightmares and visions of horrific things happening to her and her loved ones. She has had only one pleasant dream in the 17 years since Margaret’s death. In it, she walked through a sunny field before coming to rest beneath an old oak tree. Poe awoke from that dream and felt briefly happy.
Poe’s visions reflect her anxieties, which stem from her grief and trauma. After having her mother brutally taken from her, Poe lives in constant fear that a similar act of violence could befall her or her loved ones. Hindley’s stalking and harassment worsen her anxieties, causing her to experience paranoia and waking nightmares.
Poe’s nightmares only begin to abate once she makes peace with her past, a complex process that involves being honest with the people in her life and gaining closure about her mother’s murder. The novel ends with Poe, imprisoned but content, falling asleep. When she experiences the dream of the field and oak tree for the second time, she realizes that “this is all I need” (403). The recurrence of the dream illustrates that Poe has found a sense of inner peace and happiness and is ready to move forward with her life.
Alcohol Dependence
Throughout the novel, Poe and her father both display a dependency on alcohol. Poe states matter-of-factly: “We drink. That’s what my family does” (138). During stressful moments, she drinks wine or liquor to excess to “numb herself” (297). Alcohol helps Poe sleep and blunts the anxiety she suffers daily. She lacks a healthier coping mechanism, partly because she hasn’t told anyone else about the most traumatic events in her life. Despite describing her drinking as “mostly casual” (138), Poe is unable to stop or decrease her alcohol consumption. In Chapter 56, she recalls suffering a near-fatal overdose after accidentally combining alcohol and Ambien.
As Poe begins to make peace with her past and seek out healthier coping mechanisms like confiding in others, her relationship with alcohol changes. She finds herself able to resist drinking more often, although she still turns to alcohol in times of heightened stress. Several times, she declines to drink so that she can keep a clear head about the Hindley situation. As she prepares to confront Hindley on Halloween night, she resolves to quit drinking on November 1st if she survives.
After taking down Hindley, Poe follows through on her decision to quit drinking. By the time she begins her prison sentence at the end of the novel, she has been sober for several months and has made it through withdrawals. Overcoming her alcohol addiction symbolizes Poe’s progress in coping with her grief and trauma.
Tell Me What You Did (Poe’s Podcast)
Tell Me What You Did’s eponymous podcast is central to the narrative. The podcast serves as a structuring device for the novel, with many chapters formatted as a conversation between Poe and Hindley. This format allows Wilson to concurrently reveal information from the narrative present and the narrative past, building tension until the two narratives converge late in the novel.
Poe’s job as the host of Tell Me What You Did also spotlights the ethics of true crime. Poe describes her audience as “animals,” ravenous for juicy stories and eager to hunt down people they perceive as evil. Poe’s relationship with her vocation evolves as Hindley subverts her podcast’s usual dynamic and places Poe in the role of confessor. With both her crimes and her tragic past revealed to the public, Poe finds herself the subject of speculation, doubt, and callous gossip. Wilson uses Poe and her podcast to portray true crime from the perspective of a creator and a subject, highlighting both the positive and negative impacts of the genre.
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