The Madness of Crowds

On the night of the New Year’s Eve party, there is a large bonfire lit outside, and the partygoers go outside to stand near it. The murder investigation is rendered more complicated because the murder weapon (a log) is burned immediately after the crime. The bonfire symbolizes the volatile and consuming nature of fear and distrust. Fire spreads rapidly, especially when conditions are correct, and Abigail’s radical ideas likewise take hold in a society that has been primed by suffering and fear during the pandemic. A bonfire is intended to be a pleasant, communal event but it also exists on the cusp of getting out of control and becoming an inferno. Likewise, research and the pursuit of knowledge is presented as a positive force that can also be used to nefarious ends if someone like Abigail decides to use data to unethical ends.

Fire also has connotations with censorship and the suppression of information, which are also themes explored in the novel. Books and other documents have historically been burned as a way to attempt to control controversial ideas. Gamache’s initial theory is that Debbie died because someone thought they were killing Abigail. The fact that a bonfire is taking place at the same time when someone potentially believed themself to be killing Abigail adds symbolic resonance to the idea that the murderer may have been committing an act of suppression rather than violence. The goal was less to harm a specific person than to stop dangerous ideas from being spread, similar to destroying the source by letting the flames consume it.

Personal papers that are left behind at someone’s death are a motif that reoccurs in the novel: Reine-Marie’s exploration of Enid’s papers unearths crucial clues in the murder case, as does Gamache’s realization that Debbie and Abigail were sorting Paul Robinson’s papers around the time that events leading up to the murder began to unfold. In both cases, these seemingly innocuous documents end up revealing hidden tragedies from a previous generation—however, the impact is only apparent upon close inspection. The motif of personal papers implies that individuals are almost always freighted with secret and often painful histories: This theme is further substantiated by plot events such as Haniya’s traumatic history, Vincent Gilbert’s shameful secret, and Ruth’s eventual admission that she narrowly escaped being one of Ewen Cameron’s victims. The presence of personal papers implies that individuals experience shame and a desire for secrecy (which leads to coded messages or papers being kept private) but also that they do ultimately want to document what happened to them and tell their story. These records also imply that secrets rarely stay secret forever: even if events take decades to surface, the truth will eventually come to light.