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Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Fairytales
With Chapter 16, Cadence begins interspersing fairytales among the chapters. Derived from the books her father gave her when she was eight, they are all similar, nested versions of the same story, upon which she tells variations. In many of them, a king challenges his three daughters regarding their love, which they must prove through words or deeds or quests. These invariably lead to jealousy, banishment, and destruction. In some of them, a mouse or a beast appears and is ostracized, but sometimes it charms one of the girls into loving it. And in one of them, Cadence is a witch who charms her cousins into destroying the family. The fairy tale structure also allows a level of remove from Cadence’s narration, allowing her to re-learn her own story through the lens of fairy tales. She is healing throughout the course of the book, and the stories that she tells herself, and therefore the audience, are a mechanism by which she is processing her trauma before she can tell herself the true story of what happened to the Liars.
Evocative language
Cadence uses the same language throughout the novel to describe the Liars. Gat is “contemplation and enthusiasm […] ambition and strong coffee.” Johnny is “bounce, effort, and snark.” And Mirren is “sugar, curiosity, and rain.” The adjectives encapsulate the characters, so Cadence has but to invoke the words to suggest the characters. Thus, when Cadence narrates the fairytale about the three children, she doesn’t have to say who they are. The repeated language cues the reader to her meaning. The language also further parallels the story of the Liars with a fairy tale. They are both untrue stories told to learn a lesson. Until the end of the book however, it is unclear that Cadence is telling the reader a story that is different from her lived truth. The repetition also fixes the characters, like fossils in amber. In Cadence’s voyage of discovery, self-discovery, and rediscovery, she and the aunts all have the capacity for change. Johnny, Mirren, and Gat do not. They are forever fixed in the language of their young.
Possessions
For all that Cadence professes to despise the possessions over which her mother obsesses, her language indicates an obsession of her own. She begins with a catalog of all the things she and her mother destroy in the wake of her father’s departure, and then another catalog of all those they purchase as replacements. She and Gat trade books, chocolate, and his jacket. Cadence, too, obsesses over giving her possessions away, each of which she describes in lavish detail, along with the person to whom she gives it and under what conditions. It becomes a project for her, a ritual that she must complete each day. These become the evidence as her mother accuses her of wanting to erase herself. Similarly, Cadence accuses Harris of erasing Granny, and Cadence accuses Penny of exerting her status through beautiful objects. Possessions are thus treated as valuable, but transient, objects that can be used to wound the self and others.
