65 pages • 2 hours read
Riley SagerSurvive the Night: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A 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
“Be smart. Be brave. Be careful.”
“Be smart. Be brave. Be careful.” is a motif that appears several times in the novel. The words form a mantra that Charlie uses during her car ride with Josh when her suspicions flare regarding whether he might be a killer. For this reason, the motif connects with the theme of Trust Versus Paranoia, highlighting Charlie’s struggle with deciding which strangers to trust on her journey. The mantra emerges in full after Charlie notices that Josh’s driver’s license shows him to be Jake Collins from Pennsylvania. As she begins to ask him questions, hoping to catch him in a lie, she decides to “add another item to her list of things to do, joining ‘be smart’ and ‘be brave.’ Be careful” (80).
The motif also ties closely into the theme of The Wrongful Blaming of Women for Misogynistic Violence, highlighting the burden placed on women to protect themselves. The words echo the “Take Back the Night” poster that Charlie sees hanging on campus just before Josh arrives to pick her up:
Never go out alone at night.
Always walk in pairs.
Always tell someone where you’re going.
Never trust a stranger (18).
As Charlie continues to question Josh, as a woman alone in a car with a strange man, she knows she must make choices that are “smarter, braver, more careful” (81). When Josh suggests playing 20 questions, Charlie’s anxiety intensifies, reflecting the kind of anxiety felt daily by many women: “[She] slides a little closer to the passenger door, trying to put an additional inch between them. Enough to keep her checking the side mirror, looking in vain for those headlights” (84). After Charlie concludes that Josh is the Campus Killer, she repeats her mantra once again: She needs “to be smart, to be brave, to be careful” (94).
As Charlie digests Marge’s advice about supporting women, though, she starts to re-evaluate this mantra. She decides to go with Josh, believing she is responsible for protecting other women from him. In doing so, she tells herself, “It’s not smart. It’s not careful. It’s probably not even brave” (183). However, she nonetheless chooses against staying passive:
Sometimes you can’t simultaneously be smart, brave, and careful. Sometimes you need to choose one.
By following Josh to the door, Charlie’s choosing bravery (190).
This decision is a milestone in Charlie’s transition away from using imagination to escape reality. It’s also a milestone in her process of extricating her guilt from The Devastation of Grief.
Maddy’s Red Coat
Maddy’s red coat is a symbol in the novel of Charlie’s love for her friend and the memories that she cherishes with her. This symbol supports The Devastation of Grief, often reminding the reader of Charlie’s struggle to cope with Maddy’s death. Charlie puts the coat on before she leaves Olyphant. It belonged to Maddy’s grandmother originally, and it was left in the dorm room after Maddy’s death. When the coat gets stained by tea, Charlie laments,
Now it’s, if not completely ruined, at least damaged. She can wear it again—and there’s no doubt she will—but it will be just like her memories of Maddy.
Irrevocably marred (175).
The coat’s damage suggests the damage that guilt has inflicted on Charlie’s memories of Maddy, inhibiting her ability to grieve properly. However, Marge uses club soda to clean the stain. This moment foreshadows Charlie and Marge’s confrontation with their different manifestations of grief later in the novel.
The Lodge
The Mountain Oasis Lodge, the setting of the novel’s climax, is a multifaceted symbol of grief. The lodge was once beautiful with a big lobby, ballroom, and pool. When Marge brings Charlie to the lodge in the novel’s climax, however, the lodge is run-down and “looks eerie” (239). With no working electric lights, it has “odors heightened by the darkness,” including “the smell of dust,” “mold,” “damp,” and “traces of animals that have gotten inside” (242). The glass of the lobby’s French doors is “opaque with dirt on both sides,” the drapes “turned gray and fuzzy by dust” (243). The pool now is “black with dirt, slick with algae” and filled with “rotting leaves” that “float on the surface” near “a dead mouse” (281-82).
The shocking state of the lodge suggests the stark before-and-after contrast for both women on either side of Maddy’s murder. Marge’s physical and emotional health and Charlie’s mental health have deteriorated following Maddy’s death. The toxicity incorporated into the lodge’s description also hints at the nature of unprocessed grief—keeping grief locked up inside leads to more than just dust. It leads to rot and decay, whether it’s guilt or rage that keeps it contained. In this way, the lodge deepens the theme of The Devastation of Grief.
The destruction of the lodge by fire plays into this exploration of grief as well. After Marge shoots Josh and drops the kerosene, the lodge catches fire and forces Charlie, Marge, and Josh to escape. As the lodge burns, Charlie confronts Marge by the pool. Charlie asserts that Marge must make peace with Maddy’s death, even if the killer is never found. She suggests that they “can get through it together” (283). When Marge asks Charlie to kill her, Charlie refuses, telling her that “Maddy wouldn’t want that” (285). The lodge burns and collapses completely. After everything, though, Charlie ultimately returns to its ruins to gain closure. As much as fire is destructive, it can also be purifying. The fire’s active consumption of the lodge mirrors Charlie’s shift into actively addressing her guilt, overcoming it, and finally allowing herself to process her grief.
Related Titles
By Riley Sager
