payment page
Summary
Chapters 7-8
Chapter 7
On their way to Minnesota, Maren and Lee pass by Friendship Wisconsin, which Maren notes is, ironically, her birthplace. They see a sign for the Mother of Peace Carnival Fundraiser and decide to attend the carnival before finishing their journey, as they are only one day away from Sandhorn, Minnesota. Together, they have a good time sampling the rides and entertainments of the carnival. They order burgers and buy tickets for a haunted house ride, which ends with a mannequin cannibal who feasts on a table full of fake body parts. They then ride a Ferris wheel, and at the top, Lee spots an old man who seems to be waving at them. Maren recognizes him as Sully, and she is pleased to see him. After their ride on the Ferris wheel is over, they chat with Sully. While Maren is glad to see a familiar face, Lee is suspicious of the elderly eater, who invites them both to spend the night in his cabin nearby. Lee regards their reunion as an unlikely coincidence, but Maren urges him not to be so suspicious.
Maren and Lee approach a “Lucky Toss” game, where a mean teenage employee named Lauren taunts a nerdy young boy named Josh. After missing the first two shots, Josh successfully lands a baseball on the rim of a milk carton, winning the game. However, Lauren refuses to acknowledge his victory, and refuses to give him the promised prize: a stuffed “E.T.” toy. Annoyed by her unfair behavior and bullying, Lee plays the Lucky Toss game, winning two prizes. He gives one to Maren and the other to Josh, who is grateful. Later, after the carnival has closed, Lee flirts with Lauren, leading her into the woods to kill and consume her while Maren waits. Sully finds her while she waits for Lee, and he repeats his invitation to the cabin. After eating Lauren, Lee finds Maren and together they spend the night in Sully’s cabin. Though Lee continues to distrust their host, they wake up the next morning and find that Sully is gone, leaving a note that invites them to eat whatever they want from his fridge.
Chapter 8
The next day, Maren and Lee are relatively silent as they finally arrive at their destination. They pull up to a phone booth, where Maren searches for the names of her paternal grandparents and finds the address of Barbara Yearly, her grandmother. Lee drops her off at Barbara Yearly’s home, and Maren approaches her grandmother, who reacts to her coldly but without surprise. Inviting her in, Barbara introduces herself to Maren without much enthusiasm or warmth. Maren learns in the course of their conversation that her father, Francis, was actually adopted by the Yearly family at age 6. Barbara alludes to “mysterious circumstances,” and when pressed by Maren, informs her that Francis was found by the police at a rest stop along a highway. Witnesses saw him get off a bus and enter a restroom with a strange man. When police arrived, they found Francis unconscious and covered in blood, with no sign of the man. Barbara and her late husband then adopted Francis as a replacement for their late biological son, Tom, who Barbara idolizes. Barbara claims to know little about Francis’ adult life, and that she was not even aware of Maren’s existence. Further disappointing Maren, Barbara tells her that Francis has been institutionalized in a mental care facility for several years. She gives Maren the address of the institution.
Later, Maren walks to a library, where she has planned to meet up with Lee. She finds her father’s photo in a school yearbook, and then writes a letter confessing to every murder she has committed, making several copies of the letter to send to the various police stations where the murders were committed. When Lee arrives, she tells him what she has learned and he discourages her from sending out the letters, arguing that nobody will believe her anyway. That night, they break into a model home. As they lie in bed, Maren asks Lee if he has ever had a girlfriend, and he tells her about his former girlfriend, Rachel. Lee was madly in love with Rachel, and one night he invited her to his home so that she could meet his sister. However, when one of his mother’s “loser” boyfriends picks a fight with Lee, he sends Rachel and Kayla into Kayla’s room and eats the (unnamed) man. Rachel, however, witnessed the attack, and is left in a state of complete shock. She runs home in horror, and when Lee follows her there, he is barred from contacting her again by her father. Later, Rachel is institutionalized in a mental care facility due to her trauma. Lee is awkward in conversation with Maren the next morning, and after he drops her off at the institution where her father is housed, Maren instructs him to leave without her.
Analysis
At the Mother of Peace Carnival Fundraiser, Maren is for a brief and shining moment able to enjoy some of the simple adolescent pleasures that she has previously missed out on due to her condition. As she enjoys simple carnival snacks and rides, she is temporarily able to forget about her difficulties and enjoy herself. The carnival marks something of a rebirth for Maren, who notes that she felt like “a little kid again” and that she even, momentarily, was able to forget about her mother and all the people who she has killed. However, part of Maren’s optimism stems from the overly idealized mental image she has developed of her father, who she believes she will meet the following day. When she sees men at the carnival who drink beer or wear baseball caps, she imagines that her father will be superior to those men, with more refined tastes that match her own.
These chapters also further develop Maren’s relationship with Lee, which becomes increasingly romantic in nature. At the carnival, Maren is disappointed when Lee insists that she is “just a friend” when provoked by Lauren, an unkind teenager working at the “Lucky Toss” game. However, Maren is pleased when he puts his arm around her during a haunted house ride, and when he wins her a prize at a game booth. She experiences jealousy when Lee flirts with Lauren, even though he only intends to cannibalize her, and she somewhat mercilessly wishes that she could watch the act itself. Sully, who Lee distrusts, similarly teases Maren for picking up a “boyfriend” during her travels, though she also denies this characterization of their relationship.
Lee’s murder of Lauren adds further moral complexity to his characterization. On one hand, Maren believes that Lee is a better person than her, as he only eats people who seemingly “deserve” it whereas she cannot control her cannibalistic desires at all. The people who he has previously killed, such as his abusive babysitter and the drunk and violent man at Walmart, were clearly “bad” people, whether or not they deserved to be eaten. However, Lauren is just a teenager. While her mistreatment of a young boy playing the Ring Toss game reveals that she is something of a bully, Maren herself notes that she appears to have lived a difficult life despite her youth and has likely been abused by others. Lee’s chivalrous behavior towards Maren is complicated by the cruelty he shows to Lauren, who is of a similar age. Though he earlier claims to have felt like a superhero when punishing evil or wicked people, here he murders Lauren out of simple annoyance. This is one of many points in the novel that force the reader to confront the broader ethical implications of Maren and Lee’s behavior.
The next day, Maren’s idealistic fantasies of reuniting with her father come crashing down. In Minnesota, she discovers that her father, Francis, has been institutionalized for many years, and is therefore in no fit state to take care of her. Her grandmother, Barbara Yearly, responds with cold displeasure to Maren’s arrival at her home. There, she learns that Francis was adopted under mysterious circumstances that seem to suggest that he too is an eater. Barbara herself is another disappointment for Maren, treating her with polite but cold detachment. Further it is clear that Barbara has little affection for Francis, who she adopted as a replacement for her own deceased son, Tom. Looking around Barbara’s house, Maren sees a good number of photographs of Tom, but none of her father. In fact, Barbara claims that she doesn’t have any photos of Francis, and that the adoption was a mistake that she regrets.
Earlier in the novel, Sully predicted that Maren would only find disappointment if she attempted to find her family, and his pessimistic prediction proves largely accurate. Maren has spent most of the novel attempting to reach Minnesota, but once there, she comes to think of the state as a cold and unwelcoming place, a place of endless winter without the warm promise of Christmas. Feeling hopeless, Maren almost turns herself into the authorities for her crimes before being persuaded by Lee not to make any rash decisions. In the model home, Maren learns about his former girlfriend, Rachel, and the heartbreak that their separation caused him. The next morning, he seems to regret speaking so openly about her past, further cementing Maren’s belief that he is going to abandon her, as so many others have. In order to save herself from the humiliation of being abandoned, she decides to leave him first, instructing him to return to Virginia after dropping her off at her father’s institution. Her fear of abandonment, then, becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to their separation.
