The Ghostwriter

Poppy’s camera is an important motif for The Tension Between Truth and Memory. The camera is meant to expose the hidden world that Poppy witnesses in her household and in her social circle. Poppy states in Interlude 7: “I want a record of things that happen so people can’t brush off my feelings and tell me I’m overreacting, or I don’t understand” (129). This record helps Olivia to uncover the truth about the days leading up to Poppy and Danny’s murders by either confirming or contradicting some of the details that Vincent has shared with her.

The camera also represents the limits of objective truth, as it captures glimpses of what really happened in the stories that Vincent tells Olivia. However, these glimpses are only partial, causing Olivia to expose her biases whenever she uses the film reels to support her assumptions. Early in the novel, Vincent claims that Danny killed Mr. Stewart’s cat. Later, Olivia finds a film reel that shows Vincent burying the cat, causing her to think that he lied to her. Jack convinces her that just because Vincent buried the cat, it doesn’t mean that he killed it too. This point is validated when the novel reveals that Danny killed the cat due to his grudge against Mr.