48 pages • 1-hour read
What Happens in Paradise
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
Rosie’s Journals
The device of Rosie’s journals adds emotional context to the stark reality of her affair with Russ and his involvement in underhanded criminal activity, emphasizing the novel’s thematic engagement with The Tension Between Objective Fact and Emotional Reality. Her perspective reveals that the full story of a life or a relationship cannot be understood from objective facts alone; it must be accessed through private, often concealed, emotional truth. For the characters, particularly Ayers, the journals are a key that unlocks the door to a past she never knew existed, forcing her to re-evaluate her friendship with Rosie and the nature of love, loyalty, and betrayal.
Structurally, the journal entries allow the novel to move between past and present, slowly revealing the origins and complexities of Rosie’s relationship with the “Invisible Man.” The early entries highlight Rosie’s longing and the pain that the secrecy of the affair gives her. She writes, “I wanted to text him a picture of me and Ayers doing tequila slammers up at the Banana Deck, but of course the rule is ‘no texting’” (31). This passage illustrates the isolation of Rosie’s secret life, a reality that only her private writings could reveal.
The journals complicate simple, surface understandings of the characters and encourage the reader to view them in all their complexity. They reveal Rosie as an active participant in a complicated moral drama, with her own agency, conflicts, and rationalizations. This nuanced portrait provides the necessary context for the Steele family, Ayers, and Maia to understand the legacy of decisions that brought them all together.
Food and Drink
In What Happens in Paradise, Hilderbrand details the local food, drinks, restaurants, roadside stands, and beach shacks that the characters frequent on St. John to enhance her sensory portrait of the island through its food. The novel suggests that in sharing the meals and drinks they love, the characters are sharing parts of themselves as well, highlighting the novel’s thematic exploration of Everyday Rituals as Catalysts for Human Connection. For example, Russ and Rosie’s initial moment of connection happens when Russ asks Rosie to tell him her favorite thing on the menu at the restaurant where she works. She also tells him, “if you want local flavor […] There’s a place called Vie’s on Hansen Bay […] She makes some mean garlic chicken and the best johnnycakes” (76). The connection that begins in this conversation prompts Rosie to drive to Vie’s to find Russ the next night—an evening that lays the groundwork for their affair.
Throughout the novel, the characters bring each other food and drinks as a way to demonstrate their love, care, and concern. When Cash, Maia, and Ayers plan a hike together, Cash arrives with “nine bottles of water and three sandwiches from the North Shore Deli” (119), including a “pastrami melt” for Maia—the only sandwich for which she’ll break her vegetarian diet. When Huck takes Irene on a date, he “has wine on the boat. He pours her a glass of Cakebread chardonnay—she can’t believe he remembered what kind of wine she likes” (260). These scenes emphasize the connection between the food and drink the characters love and the ways that sharing them creates a sense of connection and intimacy.
Illicit Money
The recurring motif of illicit money, from stacks of cash in Rosie’s dresser to opaque offshore accounts, represents the pervasive corruption hidden beneath the characters’ seemingly ordinary lives. This money is the tangible evidence of Russ’s illicit actions, exposing the secrets propping up a double life. The motif is introduced when Ayers and Huck discover a massive stash of unexplained cash in Rosie’s room, an event that immediately implicates her in Russ’s criminal activities. Huck and Ayers find “a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars” (42), a sum so large it transforms their understanding of Rosie’s relationship with the “Invisible Man” from a simple affair into a dangerous conspiracy.
Huck himself frames the discovery of the money as a moment that divides his life into before and after, framing it as symbolic of the complicated mystery surrounding Rosie’s death. Reflecting on the illicit money, Huck reflects that “a couple weeks ago, his life was one way, and now […] it’s completely another. Now Rosie is dead—dead!—and he’s hiding a hundred and twenty-five grand under his bed […] He might as well have a pile of uranium […] the money feels radioactive (47).
The motif expands beyond the cash in the drawer to include cashier’s checks from the Cayman Islands, the shadowy operations of the Ascension fund, and the many symbols of wealth associated with Russ’s life in St. John. Hilderbrand imbues each of these elements with a sense of foreboding, signaling the danger they represent. Rosie notes that Todd Croft’s yacht, Bluebeard—named for the folktale character who murders his wives—to the “pirate” who “stole my heart” (152), directly linking her romance to the criminal enterprise funding it. The helicopter that Rosie confesses to having always wanted to ride in (317) ultimately brings about her and Russ’s death.
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