Your Fault

How do the novel’s structural choices—its flash-forward prologue and dual perspectives—expose the perceptual gap between Noah and Nick, rendering their relationship’s failure both inevitable and tragic?

Both Noah and Nick are driven by unresolved family trauma. Compare how Noah’s trauma related to paternal abuse and Nick’s trauma from maternal abandonment manifest in their actions and insecurities. Argue which character’s past proves more corrosive to their relationship and why.

Does the reclamation of the figure eight knot as a tattoo successfully create a new meaning for Noah and Nick’s love, or does it ultimately tether their romance to the symbol’s original traumatic association with control?