63 pages • 2 hours read
The Girls Who Grew Big
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide features depictions of pregnancy termination.
The Red Pickup Truck
As a mobile, self-created sanctuary for the Girls, the red pickup truck embodies their collective identity and offers physical shelter and psychological solace in a world that offers them scorn and rejection. Over the course of the novel, the truck becomes their fortress, a sovereign space where they can define motherhood and kinship on their own terms. This dynamic illuminates the theme of Found Family as a Remedy for Rejection, for the truck is the literal and figurative vehicle for the Girls’ survival and solidarity. It is a home, a community center, and a place of business: a world they carry with them.
The truck’s significance is established from the novel’s opening, serving as the unconventional site of Simone’s first birth. Just as this act immediately separates her maternal experience from societal norms, the setting of the truck underscores her independence and the primal nature of her identity as a mother. As the group of Girls grows, the truck becomes their communal heart. As Simone reflects, they “made family out of a truck bed and the milky delight of watching [their] babies grow through the fog of distant shame” (7). This imagery contrasts the external judgment they face with the internal, nurturing world they have built for themselves within the truck’s confines. In this sacred space, their bodies and their choices are celebrated, allowing them to defy the limitations of rural poverty and create a radical society of autonomy and love.
The Female Body
Because the novel maintains an unflinching focus on the female body and its raw, messy, and powerful processes, the author pointedly reclaims the female physical experience, rejecting the implicit shame and stigma that society has long associated with many aspects of womanhood and motherhood. Through graphic depictions of childbirth, breastfeeding, bleeding, and pregnancy termination, the narrative reframes the female body as a primary source of instinctual knowledge, resilience, and power. This motif is inextricably linked to The Transformative Power of Motherhood, for the entire narrative demonstrates that only by embracing these primal realities can the female characters forge authentic maternal identities for themselves. The Girls’ shared bodily experiences—from teaching each other to breastfeed to supporting one another through childbirth and pregnancy termination—become the foundation of their solidarity, creating a bond that transcends conventional social ties and validates their nontraditional paths to motherhood.
This reclamation is firmly established in the opening chapter with Simone’s birth story. Appalled by the sight of Tooth holding out a dirty, encrusted knife to cut her twins’ umbilical cords, she decides to bite through the cords herself. She recognizes this act as “the moment [she] became a mother, when [she] was the only person in the world that knew what needed to be done to keep [her] babies safe” (5). Just as she rejects Tooth’s fumbling and inadequate offer of help, she also births her children herself, without the sterile, institutionalized methods of mainstream society. Ensconced in the back of the red pickup truck that will shelter her children and the Girls for years, she engages in an act of raw, intuitive survival to protect her newborn children.
The motif extends to Simone’s later decision to take herbs to induce a miscarriage: another intensely physical experience that she undertakes within the supportive circle of the Girls. These pivotal scenes cement the idea that bodily autonomy and knowledge are central to these young women’s power and self-definition, given their marginal status on the outskirts of a judgmental society.
Water
Water, in its various forms as the ocean, the dune lake, and the bayou, is a recurring motif that explores the dualities of cleansing, birth, danger, and the untamable forces of nature that mirror the characters’ lives. This motif is also crucial to the theme of Reconnecting with the Healing Power of the Land, as the Girls reclaim these natural, often-overlooked parts of the Florida Panhandle as sites of sacred ritual, community, and personal transformation. Whether they are washing their laundry at the dune lake or barreling through the torrential downpour of a hurricane, water remains an active force in their world, reflecting both the peril of their marginalized existence and the beauty and resilience they cultivate within it.
Notably, the different bodies of water carry distinct symbolic weight. The dune lake, a rare ecosystem where fresh and salt water meet, functions as a sanctuary and the birthplace of their found family. It is at the lake that Lucille first confesses her pregnancy to Simone, an act the narrator identifies as the genesis of kinship, saying, “This is how all family’s created. Confession” (9). In contrast, the ocean represents a vaster, more overwhelming power. For Adela, her first sight of the ocean is a moment of awe that also “reminded [her] what a fragile thing [she was]” (21). This duality perfectly captures the Girls’ existence in Padua Beach, where their days are dominated by a complex blend of connection and vulnerability as they learn to navigate the unpredictable currents to of life, surviving and thriving on their own terms.
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