The Good Daughter

This penultimate section is bookended by two monumental plot points: Rusty’s death and the full account of Charlie’s ordeal on the night Gamma was murdered. Charlie narrates the reality of the night to Sam in the interlude titled “What really happened to Charlie”. The inclusion of the words “actually” and “Charlie” in the title distinguishes this account from Charlie’s previous narration. The differing versions illustrate the divergence between Charlie’s public and private selves, as well as her “good daughter” front and her individual self. The account of the rape is harrowing and graphic, its details unflinching. However, it does not come across as gratuitous; rather Slaughter includes the details to convey a factual picture of the trauma which Charlie underwent. The details also highlight the contrast between Charlie’s visceral, overwhelming ordeal and Rusty’s well-meaning but ultimately harmful injunction to box up the suffering. Charlie’s memories of the blood flowing down her legs and her child-self’s shock at the rape are so huge and intense that boxing them up constitutes another act of cruelty. Charlie’s close third-person narrative in this section refers to her as both Charlie and Charlotte, reflecting how an individual dissociates from herself during a traumatic event.

This section highlights the text’s concern with women’s sexuality and sexual violence against women, especially linked to The Flaws in the Criminal Justice System. Throughout the novel, the threat of sexual violence against women is emphasized part of Zach’s terrifying persona is his constant leering against Charlie. In the first interlude, both Gamma and Sam sense the threat, offering themselves sexually to Zach to protect their more vulnerable relative. Occurrences of sexual violence are ubiquitous in the novel, such as Mary Lynne Huckabee, Mason’s sister, who was so traumatized by the violence that she died by suicide. Charlie regularly receives sexual threats for her work in the public defender’s office. The novel also shows how women's and girls’ sexuality is stigmatized: Kelly is shamed for being promiscuous, although her pregnancy is the result of a predatory relationship. Sam’s intelligence and past trauma mean she can empathize with Kelly and see the social and gendered double standards at play, saying, “there’s a reason girls like that get lost” (347). Kelly’s socioeconomic background and her learning disabilities make her a target for manipulators and bullies. The constant physical and sexual threat to girls and women in the text is a comment on the pervasiveness of gender crimes in the real world, many of which go unacknowledged.

Charlie’s compliance with Rusty further explores the problematic idea of the titular “good daughter”. Sam might have seemed the perfect daughter because she asked Charlie to flee at her own cost, but Charlie also played the part by keeping her trauma a secret and honoring her father’s suggestion. Through Sam and Charlie’s experience, the novel shows how being the good daughter is a burden. Women often take on the emotional burden of the family, playing a part in helping their loved ones at their own expense. When Rusty asks Charlie to tape shut the box containing her worst memories, she agrees, because “she had to be the good daughter who takes care of her father” (408).

Rusty’s death is an important milestone in terms of Sam and Charlie’s psychological journeys. While Rusty’s death prompts Sam’s later discovery of Rusty’s cheques to Zach, it also catalyzes Charlie and Sam into growing up. Charlie has been overtly dependent on Rusty, seeking the role of the eponymous “good daughter,” but is now forced to make her own decisions. Rusty’s death also frees her from the burden of keeping her memory of assault secret, and she opens up to Sam almost immediately after his death. For Sam, the last scene with Rusty is cathartic, allowing her to finally believe that her father, however flawed, does love her deeply. Rusty imparts important wisdom to Sam, insisting on the value of forgetting and forgiving. He also explains to her that he is against the death penalty because watching another human being die is akin to experiencing death oneself. After witnessing an execution, one can never be the same. They realize, as Rusty has, that there is always something nihilistic and barbaric about a death sentence being carried out.

This section is also rich in terms of exploring the text’s symbols and motifs. Gamma’s photo, an important symbol, is introduced in this section, and blood as a symbol of violence, trauma, and horror is explored here further. Blood is often described as “sticky” in the text, referring to not just its physical properties, but also its residual effect as emotional trauma. The blood of a loved one or blood from violence sticks to the psyche of characters, changing them. Charlie describes being soaked with Gamma’s blood and her own hemorrhage after Zach’s violence. The profusion of blood becomes a symbol for the magnitude of the horror Charlie has faced, and continues to face, with her actual experience left unexpressed. This motif is key to the themes of The Lingering Impact of Violence and Trauma and becomes increasingly significant as the

The scene in the funeral parlor provides levity against the grimness of Charlie’s reveal and the sisters’ grief at Rusty’s death. Charlie is horrified at the cosmetics applied to Rusty and wants to close the casket, but is unable to control the mechanism. This scene is tragicomic and absurd, emphasized by Charlie laughing and crying at the same time. The scene is part of the bonding between the sisters, providing Sam and Charlie with a moment of comic relief and solidarity.

This section foreshadows the revelation of Judith Pinkman’s role in the mystery of the school shooting, creating clues characteristic of the genre. Through Sam’s logical, clinical mind, the reader begins to see Judith’s involvement in the shooting as suspicious: Sam puts down Judith’s name and role as a question mark in her notes for Rusty. Rusty himself notes that there is something odd about Judith: During Zach’s trial she had wanted the death penalty for him, but in Kelly’s case she had had “quite the conversion with this ‘turn the other cheek’ line” (385), demanding mercy. These clues prime the reader for the denouement of the final section.