42 pages • 1 hour read
Gilly MacmillanWhat She Knew
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A 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
The Media and Misinformation
A negative image of the media runs as a recurring motif throughout What She Knew. It provides a chorus of contradictory voices that bedevil Rachel during her search for her son. Rachel’s encounter with the press during her public statement depicts news people as rabid dogs running down prey, and depicts her exhaustion from the hunt. She is “[not] appealing prey, a wide-eyed antelope, say, tottering on spindly legs, but prey that’s been well hunted, run ragged, and is near the end” (4).
The image of the press as baying hounds persists when the media makes camp outside her home. Rachel and her family can’t make a move out of doors without being chased by reporters. The version of events that is reported in the papers is skewed toward sensationalism.
I was their target because I was socially unacceptable, and so they did everything they legally could: they publicly lanced me with words which were written, examined, and edited, each process carefully honing them in a calculated effort to push people’s buttons once they were published (325).
Pushing people’s buttons has dangerous consequences when Rachel and her family become the object of neighborhood vandalism and violence. The newspapers also act as the catalyst for a vicious blog attack directed at Rachel as the potential murderer. Random comments posted on social media offer yet another source of public opinion. These are woven into the narrative as background noise. The reader is allowed to draw conclusions about the limited value of opinions that contradict one another with each succeeding post.
Ben’s Belongings
The objects in Ben’s room are the only things left to connect Rachel to her son during his absence. At one point in the story, she focuses on the scent of his bedding and clothes, using her son’s security blanket as her own. “It was the smell of our history together. I inhaled that smell as if it could revive me somehow, give me some answers, or some hope, and, like that, I just waited. I didn’t know what else to do” (101-102). Because Rachel possesses Ben’s things, she still feels a physical connection to her son. Their existence makes Ben more real to her during his physical absence and keeps her from slipping into a state of complete despair.
Ben’s possessions don’t simply function as a symbol of the boy’s existence. They are also a plot device that allows Rachel to find him. When she plays one of her son’s online video games, she realizes Ben is online playing another game. Even though the police aren’t impressed with the significance of the clue, it reinforces Rachel’s conviction that her son is still alive.
Another of Ben’s possessions also provides the lightening rod for solving the mystery of his disappearance. When Joanna casually mentions Ben’s nunny, Rachel realizes that his teacher is the one who abducted him. No one knew about nunny, the security blanket, but Rachel. That one random comment galvanizes Rachel to take desperate action and discover the room that imprisoned her son.
Insomnia and Emotional Instability
Both principal narrators of the novel are plagued with insomnia. In each case, the insomnia is symptomatic of psychological malaise. Rachel’s disquiet is easily understood. Ever since her son’s disappearance, she has been a bundle of nerves. Initially, she tries to sleep in Ben’s bedroom to reinforce her connection to her missing son. However, her emotional state prevents her from getting any rest. “I felt the various textures of my fear: shivery, visceral, tight, pounding, in turn or all at once. I only fell asleep once, in the small hours, and woke to a sensation of being choked” (108). Throughout the narrative, Rachel describes a number of similar nights. In the few instances where she can sleep, she is bedeviled by sinister nightmares.
While the source of Rachel’s insomnia is easy to pin down, Jim’s is a little more obscure. It can’t be traced to simple nervous tension. Because Jim strives so hard to ignore his emotions, he can’t afford to fall asleep. Dreams are the realm of the unconscious, and Jim doesn’t want to access that part of his being at all. While he’s in a relationship with Emma, she succeeds in enveloping him with a sense of calm. He loses this borrowed tranquility after their break-up.
Manelli is quick to make the connection between Jim’s loss of Emma and his loss of sleep. She attempts to make him understand that peace of mind can only be achieved if he is willing to confront his emotions and deal with them. Until he does, sleep will elude him, and his mental instability may result in a complete breakdown.
