39 pages • 1 hour read
Liz MooreLong Bright River
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Pied Piper of Hamelin
Even though Mickey doesn’t fully tell the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin until late in the novel, its meaning permeates the entire book. She explicitly states that she sees the story as the perfect symbol for the plight of Kensington’s youth. In the fable, the Piper spirits away all the children of the village as an act of revenge after the townsfolk refuse to pay him for solving their rodent problem. In the story, the blame clearly falls on the shortsighted villagers who are pennywise but pound foolish.
Similarly, the families of Kensington bear the responsibility for instilling damaging values in their children that will never allow the younger generation to rise above the philosophy of “Life is hard.” The police also bear responsibility for the problem by turning a blind eye to drug addicts. Even those officers who aren’t corrupt tend to see Kensington as a problem area with no solution. Worse still are those who take advantage of Kensington’s vulnerability for their own ends. The Ahearns of the world abuse their power and do nothing to stop the predatory behavior of their own officers.
These forces combine to create a dire set of conditions that lead to an understandable sense of despair among the young. No one helps them envision anything but a bleak future for themselves, so they seek relief through the temporary escape of drugs. Mickey says:
I have thought of this story every day of my life on the job. I picture the drug as the Piper. I picture the trance it casts […] I imagine the town of Hamelin after the story ends, after the children and the music and the Piper have gone. I can hear it: the terrible silence of the town (440-41).
Abandos
The term “abandos” refers to the numerous abandoned buildings in Kensington. Some are condemned for demolition, while others have merely been left to rot. These are most often used as the refuge of drug addicts or are places where they can go to get high. Several of the book’s scenes take place in such houses. Dock even conducts many of his drug-dealing activities in a building that is slated for demolition. Mickey picks up a sense of despair from all the abandos. She says of them, “Interior cold, I think, is even bitterer than the cold of the outdoors. No sunlight penetrates the inside of these abandoned homes, not boarded up as they are” (247). Mickey later makes a similar comment about Gee’s house, where the thermostat is always set to fifty degrees. Although the building is inhabited, its physical and emotional coldness puts it in the same category as the rest of the abandos in the area.
The sense of abandonment isn’t limited to the buildings themselves. They function as a metaphor for a thriving community that has been abandoned by industry. All the good-paying jobs have left, and the residents must learn to scrape by as best they can. The book’s epigraph describes the Kensington of 1891 as a bustling center of commerce that was populated by prosperous, purposeful people. That attitude has abandoned the district completely.
Perhaps even more telling than the abandoned houses are the abandoned churches. The book’s most pivotal scene takes place in an abandoned cathedral. Abandoned homes symbolize that the life has gone out of the district’s families. Abandoned churches mean that the spiritual light has gone out of the entire community.
Secret Compartment
Mickey and Kacey grow up in a hostile environment. The streets are filled with drug addicts. The police do nothing to protect the community. No one in government attempts to stimulate the local economy to provide jobs. The girls have lost their parents, and their grandmother’s home is cold and loveless. However, they create a secret compartment under the floorboards of their bedroom to preserve their dreams of the future. Both girls write down their hopes and plans and hide them in this cavity in the floor. Their actions suggest that the world outside their bedroom door is so hostile to aspirations of any kind that the only way to keep a dream alive is to hide it from view.
The sisters support one another’s desires by their willingness to share that secret space and bear witness to one another’s innermost wishes. Unfortunately, Kacey succumbs to the pressure of the outside world and lapses into drugs to relieve her pain. For her part, Mickey severs the bond between the sisters by judging Kacey’s choices so harshly. The secret compartment lies empty for many years as an indication that all hope has been lost.
The notion that hope isn’t entirely dead comes into play when Kacey hides the cards and letters from their father for Mickey to find. The secret compartment once more functions to protect correspondence that speaks of possibilities instead of despair. The nurturing connection between the sisters and the link they form with their father must be hidden from the toxic familial bond they share with Gee and the O’Briens.
