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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying and substance use.
Zip Zap
The Zip Zap app symbolizes the idea of power and control through knowledge. Although gossip is a potential issue in all aspects of life, the idea of it facilitated by an application that is instantaneous and anonymous emphasizes how much more dangerous it is in the age of social media. This symbolism conveys the theme of The Impact of Secrecy and Gossip. As the several students and staff fall victim to the information on the app, it becomes clear just how dangerous it is for people to hold secrets and information over others. While students share information through email or via text, thereby believing that they have security, the actions of Levi and Grady remind the students how nothing related to technology is ever truly secret. Although the students are in some ways guilty of keeping secrets or being dishonest, the vicious way that the information is spread—then used by the other students as a form of ridicule or isolation—emphasizes just how dangerous private information can be in the wrong hands. In the end, the fact that it was two unknown students who spread the information and no reason was directly given for their actions emphasizes the universality of this problem. While Zip Zap is the specific app in question in the novel, it stands for the larger ideas of social media, cyber bullying, and traditional word-of-mouth gossip, all of which lend power and control to those who control the information.
Priorities
Priorities, the speakeasy that East and Charley build in the cellar, symbolizes the idea of status and privilege. The presence of a bar within a boarding school is itself ironic, as the novel juxtaposes the idea of learning with the idea of minors getting intoxicated. Additionally, the bar’s name, Priorities, conveys the idea that the students involved are more concerned with their social life than the act of learning. Priorities serves as a microcosm of the broader issue at play in the novel. The ideas of learning, teaching, and curriculum are entirely absent from the novel, despite the text covering an entire year at Tiffin. Instead, the focus is on the social lives of the students, the gossip they share, and, for East and Charley, creating a bar that will make them “legendary” in their popularity at the school. Even when Audre discovers the bar, she has little concern for East and Charley’s actions; instead, she is concerned with usurping Priorities for her own use, viewing it as something that could add to the prestige of the school. While Priorities sits at the center of the novel for the main characters, it emphasizes just how much value these students place on the idea of social status.
The symbolism of Priorities develops the theme of Privilege as a Source of Protection From Consequences. The bar itself is a common trope in literature about private school and education; the students have developed the fabled “secret society” that includes only the most important students at the school. The fact that East is able to build inside the school, bring materials onto campus, hire people from in town to help, and even recruit Chef Haz emphasize the power that he has at Tiffin. Ultimately, Priorities is a place he creates that serves as a physical representation of his social status and privilege that he holds at the school. In turn, he invites his closest friends to the bar, creating a society that comes together at the novel’s end to continue to exert their influence on the school in future novels in the series.
The Rankings
In the novel, America Today’s yearly rankings of top boarding schools in the country are a symbolic representation of the idea of prestige. From the start, Audre fixates on the release of the rankings, even wondering if she will lose her job at Tiffin if the school does not make a good showing. Otherwise, Audre cares little about the actual functioning of the school, instead focusing on keeping their issues a secret and continuing to keep up the façade of prestige at Tiffin. Even when Audre is confronted with the possibility that the list may be fraudulent, she continues to defend it, insisting that nothing is amiss—despite genuinely thinking otherwise internally.
While the literal rankings serve as an important facet of Tiffin’s prestige, it is also the impact that it has on the students and staff that plays an important role. As the first “Tiffin Talks” section notes, no one “actually cares [yet] it feels as if the metaphorical dark cloud that has been hanging over camp since Cinnamon Peters died just let in a stream of sunlight” (24). In this way, the rankings convey the theme of Privilege as a Source of Protection From Consequences. Just with the announcement of the new rankings, the students find a new sense power and self-worth. Conversely, as the legitimacy of the rankings is called into question, Audre panics over the idea that they did not actually earn the spot. This reaction emphasizes the true hollowness of the rankings: they lend power and prestige with a number—rather than any actual actions by the school itself.
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