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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Lake
Much like the set on a stage, the lake on the Dellecher grounds is crucial to the meaning of If We Were Villains. Oliver notes at the end of Act 1, the lake “lurks,” almost like a character, in all of the novel’s scenes. Sometimes the lake offers a place to shed inhibition, as when the group swims in its waters or parties on its shores. Yet the lake is also where the decision to abandon societal norms takes on darker implications. Richard dies in the lake after the group decides not to save him. It is where other key acts of violence occur, including the final fight between Richard and James, and Richard’s “mock” attempt to drown his friend during a game gone wrong. When the dazzling reflective stage floor designed for the performance of King Lear is revealed to the characters toward the novel’s end, Oliver thinks it looks like the lake in winter, adding another layer of meaning to this symbol.
After serving his 10-year sentence, Oliver returns to Dellecher with Colborne. Oliver reveals his version of their fateful fourth year as they walk around the lake. Again, the lake provides the setting for crucial reflections. Oliver notices that while the trees have changed, the lake appears as it always has. A final culmination of the symbol of the lake and the water in the novel is James’s alleged suicide. Although it occurs off the San Juan Islands in Washington State, his decision to end his life in a body of water provides a final connection back to the lake.
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare is, arguably, the most consequential writer in the English language—and he authors many of the lines in If We Were Villains, including the novel’s title. His works are the only ones that the students at Dellecher study and they speak it, Oliver explains to Colborne, like a “second language.” Steeped in the language and thought of this powerful writer, Oliver asserts that Shakespeare is, in a sense, responsible for what happened between them. In saying this, Oliver does not mean that Shakespeare’s writing led them to excess or murder but rather that emotional extremes represented in his dramas and sonnets shaped the way the students understood their places in the world, as well as the way they should feel in given situations.
Shakespeare’s singular genius is woven into the text of the novel, and he also serves as an example of what a great artist, including a great actor, should strive to achieve. The model of excellence he presents is as central to the novel as his words. Both are intoxicating and, as If We Were Villains makes clear, dangerous.
Hamlet
Hamlet (written between 1599 and 1601) is not performed by Oliver’s cohort, but both the play and its title character are powerful symbols across the novel. It is the play that Oliver’s sister asks about when he travels home for Thanksgiving, and it is one that he and his peers often reference in passing. The story of an intellectual young man, tormented by his inability to act and haunted by the ghost of his father, the character of Hamlet provides a way to understand Oliver’s ongoing self-doubt, his preference for inaction, and his visions of what he calls the ghost of Richard. In addition, Oliver returns repeatedly to a key speech given by Hamlet in Act V Scene ii—both when he talks about the sparrow and when he notes “The readiness is all”—as he makes the decision to claim responsibility for Richard’s death. As Hamlet prepared himself to die, so does Oliver prepare to sacrifice himself for James.
Not only is the character of Hamlet a key symbol in the novel, so too is the play itself. Although the novel’s title is taken from King Lear, its final resolution draws on a key structure from Hamlet, the play-within-the-play. Hamlet believes that reenacting the murder of his father will expose his uncle’s guilt. While the students at Dellecher do not stage a play to reveal the guilty party, here, too, a play provides the means of determining who killed Richard.
