50 pages • 1-hour read
The Conditions of Will
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Symbols & Motifs
Will Carter’s Last Will and Testament
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of rape, anti-gay bias, and emotional abuse.
Hastings uses Georgia’s father’s will as a symbol of the Complexities of Familial Relationships. After their father’s death, the reading of his will becomes a source of tension for the Carter siblings, as each believes that his last wishes will reveal the truth of how he saw each of them. Their anxiety is rooted in intergenerational prejudice. When their grandfather died, he left each of his grandchildren over $6 million but excluded Oliver, because he didn’t approve of him being gay. In the lead-up to reading their father’s will, the siblings worry that he will similarly discriminate against Oliver.
The reading of the will leads the Carter siblings to discover who their father truly was. In the will, he stipulates that Margaret will receive the primary and vacation homes and 10 percent of his company; Tennyson will receive 90 percent of the company and his car; Maryanne will get his yacht; Georgia will get a plot of land in New Hampshire; Alexis Beauchêne will get the lake house, and Oliver will receive the remaining $16 million in his personal bank account. The will clarifies that their father had a longtime lover, Alexis. Meeting Alexis allows them to discover the truth of Will’s sexuality. The fortune their father leaves Oliver suggests he loved his son and regretted his mistreatment of him.
Okatie, South Carolina
Throughout Hastings’s novel, the setting of Okatie, South Carolina, underscores the challenges of Confronting Personal Trauma and the Past. When Georgia learns that her father died of a heart attack, she returns to Okatie and her estranged family for the first time in 10 years. Her father’s death compels her to confront the scenes, settings, and relationships that defined her past life. Returning to Okatie helps Georgia admit that she’s avoided processing her childhood trauma. Instead, she’s ignored it, hoping that time and distance would diminish her painful memories. Being back in Okatie forces her to realize that avoiding her trauma isn’t the same thing as healing from it.
The novel uses Georgia’s response to Okatie to show how revisiting places from the past can trigger an individual’s memories and traumas. Georgia finds herself inadvertently reverting to the demure, silent child she was when she was living at home. She also has intermittent outbursts, losing her temper with her family because of their mistreatment just as she did as a child—behavioral patterns Georgia thought she’d outgrown during her time away. Being back in the conservative and hostile environment where she grew up reignites these emotions and defense mechanisms.
Georgia’s Childhood Bedroom
As the setting of Georgia’s teenage repeated sexual assaults, her childhood bedroom symbolizes her past trauma. After Will, Margaret, and Maryanne discovered her and Beckett together in her room, Margaret stripped her bed, emptied her dresser, and later threw out her mattress. In the present, however, the same childhood bed frame remains. Furthermore, the physical environment still retains the memories of the abuse Georgia suffered here. It is therefore a reminder of Beckett’s sexual violence.
When Georgia first returns home, she worries that revisiting her room will upset her. However, in Chapter 21, she discovers that being back in her old room doesn’t feel as distressing as she expected. She thought that everything she experienced in this space “would mean [she hated] being in [her] bedroom” and that “it would be triggering or uncomfortable, but there’s something about coming back and sleeping in that room that makes [her] feel…stronger” (155). Georgia’s surprising response to her childhood bedroom shows that she is healing from her trauma. Her decision to have sex with Sam in this room later in the novel underscores her personal growth. Rather than reminding her of Beckett’s abuse, having sex with Sam in her bedroom lets her reclaim the space on her own terms. She chooses to have sex in her room with someone she cares about for the first time, reiterating her autonomy in the present.
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