49 pages • 1-hour read
Wild Side
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Themes
Navigating Grief and Loss
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes references to drug addiction and the death of a loved one.
Erika’s death unmoors Tabitha and Rhys and provides the impetus of the plot. Tabitha’s grief initially manifests as anger. Since Erika became addicted to pain medications in high school, Tabitha has held herself responsible for her sister’s well-being. She can’t help blaming herself for Erika’s relapse and overdose but directs her anger over Erika’s death at Rhys. It’s easier to blame Rhys than to blame herself or even hold Erika responsible.
Tamping her sorrow is a form of self-preservation. Throughout the majority of the novel, Tabitha avoids crying over her late sister. She pushes reminders of Erika to the margins to stay strong for her parents and nephew. Her bristly behavior is a manifestation of her sadness and fear of confronting Erika’s absence. Tabitha’s storyline offers one representation of how loss might affect the individual.
Through Rhys, the narrative explores an alternate representation of grief and shows how loss might affect different people in distinct ways. Erika’s death disrupts Rhys’s sense of the past and future. Because they “forged a friendship,” Rhys wants to honor Erika’s memory and wishes by caring for Milo Garrison (77). At the same time, Erika falsely represented Milo’s circumstances and Tabitha’s character in a way that saddens Rhys and confuses his sense of reality. While Erika made him believe “that Tabitha was self-centered and work-obsessed, not cut out to raise a child,” Rhys immediately understands that the opposite is true (77). His sorrow over Erika’s death is paired with a sense of betrayal and disorientation. He is forced to question who Erika was and in turn who Tabitha is and what Milo needs. His grief manifests in more internal ways than Tabitha’s. He buries his emotions rather than exhibiting them via combative displays. This only unsettles Rhys and pushes him away from those closest to him.
Through Rhys and Tabitha, the novel suggests that one must open up about loss in order to heal from it. The way that Rhys and Tabitha connect over Erika’s journals is particularly influential to their healing processes. The journals let them face what happened in the past and help them come to terms with Erika’s absence in the present. Together they pursue renewal, forgiveness, and growth. The novel implies that no matter how one’s grief manifests, one can always overcome loss and sorrow with the help of loved ones.
Developing Family and Community Relationships
As Tabitha and Rhys build a life together in Rose Hill, they discover the transformative power of connection. At the start of the novel, both Tabitha and Rhys are isolated. Tabitha devotes most of her time to running her restaurant, looking out for Erika, babysitting for Milo, and mediating Paul and Lisa’s relationship with her sister. Meanwhile, Rhys spends his time traveling back and forth between Florida and Emerald Lake, wrestling, and training. Because of his tumultuous childhood, Rhys has learned not to make lasting connections for fear of abandonment and disappointment. He’s accustomed to his solitude and “prefer[s] flying under the radar” (41). In large part, Rhys’s withdrawn state of being is the result of never knowing his parents and growing up in the foster care system. By way of contrast, Tabitha has a defined nuclear family. However, her familial relationships are often more burdensome than stabilizing.
When Tabitha and Rhys decide to get married and raise Milo together in Rose Hill, they are taking the first step to creating a new family and community structure. Their marriage by all accounts is “fake”—a legal loophole so that Rhys can continue wrestling and traveling between Canada and the States while contributing to Milo’s life. Over time, however, Rhys and Tabitha discover that they both can and want to make a life together.
The time that the couple spends together at their Rose Hill home represents a healthy family life. They share food, take walks, go on picnics, visit the grocery store, play in the yard, and share conversations. At the novel’s start, Tabitha lives in her house alone. After Erika’s death, both Milo and Rhys move in with her. What was once a place for Tabitha to crash after work becomes a place to raise a family. The shift in Tabitha’s once-isolated home captures her and Rhys’s work to create a loving familial base both for Milo and for each other.
Tabitha and Rhys spend time with their friends in Rose Hill, a representation of community. After Rhys comes into her life, Tabitha begins spending more time with Rosie, Skylar, and Gwen. Meanwhile, Rhys gets to know West, Ford, and Bash. The novel shows how people bond through ordinary but meaningful activities: going out for drinks, bowling, taking trips, and sharing dinners. These experiences offer Tabitha and Rhys a community base and remind them that they’re not alone and have support and love from their neighbors. In Chapter 38, for example, Tabitha, surrounded by friends, meditates on her developing social sphere: “The food is delicious, the setting is homey, and the company can’t be beat. And for the first time since Erika’s death, I’m happy” (351). Because of their community, Tabitha and Rhys not only feel more connected, but more secure in their lives. Even their grief becomes more tenable with communal support.
Identity and Trust in Intimate Relationships
Silver leans into contemporary romance tropes, such as enemies to lovers, to intensify the protagonists’ relationship and to capture how love can change the individual. Tabitha and Rhys start off as foes, but they gradually soften to one another. Their forced proximity compels them to confront their differences, and the enemies-to-lovers trope sets the groundwork for their heated dynamic.
Self-isolating habits preclude Tabitha and Rhys’s ability to trust others and to open up about their experiences. For Tabitha, sex and romance have always come second to work and family. Therefore, when she meets Rhys and immediately feels attracted to him, she tries to dismiss her feelings in order to focus on caring for Erika, Milo, her parents, and her restaurant. Rhys has similarly put work before love and has learned to embrace rather than fight his solitude.
Over the course of the novel, Tabitha and Rhys gradually learn that vulnerability isn’t a sign of weakness. Rather, it can foster deep and lasting connections. When they first become involved, Tabitha is reluctant to show Rhys her weaknesses because she blames him for Erika’s death and resents him for inserting himself into Milo’s life. Rhys is reluctant to show Tabitha his weakness because “hashing things out is not [his] forte” (114). As a wrestler with World Professional Wrestling, Rhys presents himself to the world as an imposing, dominant figure—he’s tall and muscular and intimidates people with his physique. In reality, Rhys is a soft-hearted individual who wants to be loved and has plenty of love to give. Embracing this side of himself feels difficult because “[s]haring things about [him]self is a quality that people drummed out of [him] many, many years ago” (114). With Tabitha, however, he gradually feels compelled to open up. He not only tells her about his wrestling career but about his difficult childhood and isolation as an adult. Tabitha values Rhys’s honesty and sees it as a sign that he trusts her. In turn, she realizes that she can trust Rhys with her story.
As Tabitha and Rhys share with each other, both their relationship and individual identities strengthen. In talking about their challenges and sorrows, hopes and dreams, Tabitha and Rhys are offering their truest selves to one another. This fosters trust. Over the course of the novel, Tabitha and Rhys’s emotional intimacy begets deep and meaningful sexual intimacy. Silver shows how intimate relationships are built upon a balanced, reciprocal exchange.
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