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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Price of Possessions
Money and what it can buy dominates the conflict between Harris and the aunts as well as that that between the aunts and the Liars. Harris uses the island, the trust funds, and the homes he has had built for each of the aunts as leverage so he can manipulate each of them. In particular, the ivory statues serve as a reminder that each of these objects comes with a price, often human and illicit. The Liars need Gat to remind them that ownership is a questionable construct. Gat forces them to see the island as more than their private getaway. It’s also an ancestral home to indigenous people, and the Sinclairs’ possession of it makes them complicit in the ethical problems attendant upon colonialism and capitalism.
The Liars acknowledge these problems in their destruction of the ivory statues that Granny so prized. Cadence, additionally, appears to be atoning when she donates her possessions. But Cadence’s anguish at the stark nakedness of New Clairmont betrays her and reveals the complexity of property’s hold over her and the family. Cadence senses a deeper meaning to her mother’s behavior regarding possessions. As she divests herself of her husband’s possessions and replaces them with beautiful objects of her own choosing, Cadence accuses her (if only privately) of exerting her status in society through her purchasing power. She’s not wrong, but her insight doesn’t go far enough. She should see that the behavior originates with Harris, and that her own desire to rid herself of her possessions is not so much charitable as it is self-punishment.
Complications in the Pursuit of Love
Love, and its pursuit, forces Cadence to behave in ways that mimic the Sinclairs’ object worship. Cadence begins the novel with her father’s departure, and she describes her understandable distress in hyperbolic, overwrought terms, claiming to be shot and bleeding on her front lawn. While her metaphoric use of language quickly becomes apparent, the depth of her pain does not abate over time. She continues to describe the loss of her father as an open, bleeding wound that requires Gat’s careful tending. Her obsession is so complete that it takes a careful reader to notice the glaring omission here. Cadence’s father merely left. Gat’s is dead. Yet Cadence never listens to his lamentations or nurtures him, thus revealing the essential characteristic of a desperate, rather than a selfless, love.
This is the same kind of love that dominates the relationships among Harris and the aunts. Clearly, Harris loves his family, but his love is conditional on the ways they reflect Sinclair-ness, including their height, their hair, their eyes, their intelligence, and their athleticism. This selfish, desperate love is explored in the fairytales Cadence tells about a father demanding pronouncements of love from his daughters or sending them on impossible quests to prove it. Again, though, Cadence fails to see that this desperation runs both ways. The aunts are just as desperate for Harris’s love as he is to have them be good Sinclairs. They are perfectly willing to feed one another to the dragon, metaphorically speaking, for a word or two of praise. However, their behavior changes after the fire, a riddle for which Cadence has no answer.
The Danger of Pervasive Lies
Given the book’s title, the pervasiveness of lies is likely its most important theme and the one most deeply woven into its language. Cadence regularly makes claims about the Sinclairs and the Liars using “to be” verbs. Regardless of whether these statements are positive or negative, they are demonstrably false: The opening lines, “No one is a criminal. No one is an addict. No one is a failure,” are triply untrue as they pertain to Cadence. So when she later says that Gat is “contemplation and enthusiasm […] ambition and strong coffee,” the reader has no reason to believe her. In fact, the reader has no reason to believe any aspect of her narration, some of which indeed turns out to be imagined.
Strangely, the most obvious lies she tells also feel the most palpably true, and the text suggests lying serves as a useful coping mechanism. For example, Cadence describes a witch slamming her skull with an ivory goose forcing her to take pills and hide in the dark. The imagery is powerful and could certainly refer to a migraine. But a reader familiar with the ending will see how it obviously refers to her emerging memory of destruction and her associated physical trauma as she tries to both suppress and remember the incident. Even as Cadence remembers in full everything that happened, she continues to hide. She never makes a full confession of her returned memories. And she never apologizes or atones for her actions. Her family acquiesces in this behavior, suggesting that some things are better left unsaid.
