58 pages • 1-hour read
The Elements: A Novel
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide features sexual violence and harassment, rape, child sexual abuse, child abuse, death by suicide, child death, emotional abuse, physical abuse, antigay bias, bullying, suicidal ideation, and self-harm.
Complicity and Enabling in Abuse
Each of the primary characters in The Elements is connected to a crime of abuse in their pasts. As they face the impacts of these abuses on themselves, their families, and others, they grapple with their own roles in the abuse. They question if they were complicit, and if this complicity enabled the abuse suffered by victims. Even if they do not play a role in the abuse, or remove themselves and take no action, they are wracked with the moral dilemma of the part they play.
For Vanessa, she takes time in her isolated cabin on the island to consider whether she played a role in Brendan’s abuse and Emma’s death by suicide. Though Vanessa did not explicitly know what Brendan was doing, she ignored strong hints that she could have investigated. Her lack of awareness was detrimental, and she wonders why she never felt a need to learn more: “Could I not have asked him then? Could I not have insisted on knowing the truth about that phone call and why he’d taken this sabbatical so unexpectedly, and then ended it without warning?” (63). She faces the guilt of having been so comfortable in her life that she never felt a need to question what was happening to the people around her. Even as increasingly strange occurrences arose, whether it was Emma asking for a lock, or a friend confronting and blaming her in a store, Vanessa was content to remain ignorant. Therefore, she is haunted by the possibility that if she had pressed Brendan about what was happening, Emma might be alive.
Whereas Vanessa is cast as an enabler to an abuser, though one without explicit knowledge of the crimes, Evan plays the role of an accomplice. When he refuses to intervene in Robbie’s rape of Lauren, he implicates himself in the crime. Evan’s need to feel loved and his desire for Robbie keep him loyal to Robbie. When Lauren confronts him years after the trial, she forces him to confront the fact that his continued silence is just as damaging: “‘I can’t even read a history book anymore,’ she tells me, ‘It’s all tied up in that time. In what you and your rapist friend did to me. You’ve caused me more pain than you can possibly imagine and have never taken responsibility for any of it’” (239). Lauren expresses the pain she lives with every day and that Evan’s silence makes him complicit in her continued and worsening nightmare. As long as the world believes that he and Robbie are innocent, her abuse continues.
Resistance to Taking Responsibility
A common thread throughout the collection is the way in which characters frame their actions in ways that avoid taking responsibility. Many deflect, either claiming outright innocent or scapegoating someone or something else for the way they acted. This, more than anything, prevents them and others from accepting the truth and moving on.
Brendan refuses to admit that he abused any of the girls that accused him, even after he is sentenced and serves his prison sentence. Vanessa cannot stand his refusal of ownership for the pain he caused, seeing it as selfish. When she meets a pub owner who similarly deflects blame for his crime of murdering his wife, her frustrations with Brendan boil over: “‘Your first thought […] was to fast-forward to years after your trial, […], and who you would be then and what you would do. Not a thought in your head for the poor woman you’d killed’” (73). She sees the pub owner as a mirror to Brendan. Both are men whose actions resulted in harm to women, and yet both only look toward the future and their own wellbeing. After hearing about how the pub owner swore to be a better man before mourning his wife, Vanessa criticizes him. However, he seeks sympathy from her as someone else who is seen as guilty for a heinous crime; on the island and in the media, people judge Vanessa as complicit in Bredan’s abuse. In this way, Water raises the question of how far guilt and complicity go, and who has the right to refuse responsibility for their own or others’ crimes.
Rebecca confronts her father’s behavior as an adult, believing that it is not his perversions that make him a bad man, but his decision to act on them. When Freya asks her about Brendan, and whether or not his abuse of others might stem from an abuse in his past, Rebecca insists that it does not matter. Rebecca insists that ultimately, people are the only ones responsible for their actions: “None of us can be held responsible for the things that lurk in the darkest parts of our minds. But in our lives? Yes, we can. So whether something happened to Brendan when he was a child or not […] he could have chosen to break the cycle” (335). Rebecca blames her father for possibly continuing a cycle of abuse, directly connecting his actions to those of Freya. Freya, who was raped as a child, now rapes young men as a form of revenge. She perpetuates the cycle by robbing them of the innocent that was taken from her. Like Brendan, though, Freya refuses to hold herself accountable, deflecting the blame to the twins who assaulted her when she was 12.
So many of the characters in The Elements refuse to take responsibility for their actions because they refuse to see themselves as the aggressor or the criminal. Each considers themselves a fundamentally good person who was wronged and therefore, their actions are justified. Admitting responsibility for morally reprehensible crimes means they would have to alter their view of themselves, and most are not willing to do that, especially because their actions span years, sometimes decades. It is therefore easier for them to blame someone or something else and not have to live with the guilt of their actions.
Trauma as a Transmissive Force
Trauma defines the characters in these four novellas. Whether it is trauma they experience, trauma they witness, or trauma they inflict, trauma influences their lives in a profound way. Intentionally or unintentionally, unless they undertake a deep process of healing, their trauma is passed on to others. Some seek to perpetuate the cycle of trauma, while others work to stop it.
Of the four primary characters, Freya is the most involved in perpetuating cycles of abuse and trauma. She was raped repeatedly when she was 12 by two 14-year-old male friends, and they punished her by burying her in a crate when she resisted. Rather than seeking to heal from these traumatic events, Freya uses her power and influence as an adult to inflict similar trauma on young boys as a means of revenge: “I’ve never slept with a boy twice. I’ve never needed to. It’s not as if I actually enjoy the experience, after all. I just want to destroy their chances of ever forming happy, healthy relationships in the future” (301). Freya gets a thrill from enacting what she perceives as justice. She never considers that in some cases, her actions may ensure that a survivor goes on to sexually assault others; she mistakenly believes that everyone responds to trauma in the same way. Instead of taking away their ability to become predators, she may be increasing someone’s potential for abuse.
Whereas Freya represents an example of trauma being directly inflicted from abuser to victim, other characters experience generational trauma. Evan is abused by his father while both Rebecca and Aaron struggle to find a way to shield Emmet from their traumatic pasts. While Rebecca leaves their family to keep Emmet from her history, Aaron becomes an overbearing parent, hoping to protect his son from experiences like the ones he suffered. He eventually realizes that his actions, with no explanation, are alienating Emmet. When he finally explains his past to Emmet, Emmet gains a new understanding of his father. By telling Emmet about his and Rebecca’s past trauma, he breaks a cycle of generational silence and dysfunction. Instead of pushing Emmet away, as Aaron and Rebecca feared, the confession humanizes them for Emmet helps him sympathize with them.
The Elements explores the nature of trauma. Some, like Freya see it as a force with a will of its own over which she has no control. Others, like Rebecca, see trauma as an opportunity for an individual to make a choice; for her, trauma doesn’t dictate actions. Other characters, like Evan, are in denial of the trauma they’ve experienced and how it impacts their lives. Ultimately, the book suggests that there is no single way to experience or heal from trauma, but that recovery often involves reaching out to others and being a positive force in their lives.
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