Behind Her Eyes

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-18

Part 2, Chapters 19-36

Part 3, Chapters 37-58

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Sleep

Sleep is a symbol of escape and refuge in the book. It is also where the most dramatic action happens. Rob, Louise, and Adele all suffer from night terrors but learn to perform lucid dreaming and astral projection. In Westlands, shared nightmares are the bond first joining Adele and Rob. Adele longs for sleep, but it takes her back to the night her parents died: “Sleep keeps bringing her back to therapy […] Sleep, always sleep. Faux sleep, real sleep. The appearance of sleep” (38). She teaches Rob to control what happens in his sleep, thus escaping his night terrors and horrible real life. Ironically, Adele’s helping Rob in this way is her ultimate undoing, as Rob eventually uses what Adele teaches him to take over her body.

Louise expresses the power of nurturing sleep: “A few good nights’ sleep have changed me. I’m refreshed and energized. I haven’t felt so well in years, if ever. I feel like a new me” (162). This is an indication of the influence Adele has over Louise, encouraging her to take on a healthier lifestyle. Meanwhile, Adele “seems diminished, haunted even. Her hair has lost its lustre [sic]” (162). Adele is working on making Louise the new object of David’s desire. Louise has always sleepwalked but as she learns to control her dreams, she experiences better nights. Adele, on the other hand, is exhausted, but “[m]y tiredness is going to have to wait. After all, I can sleep when I’m dead” (197). This is another example of foreshadowing, hinting that Adele knows she is going to die.

At the end of Part 2, Louise experiences a breakthrough while sleeping and dreaming. She passes through the second door and finds herself in Adam’s room. When she awakens and realizes she physically moved there, she is confused. However, this ability to project while sleeping brings together reality and the dream state; the next stage is for Adele to orchestrate the switch while appearing to sleep.

The Well and the Wood

The old, disused well in the Fairdale estate is an important symbol as it literally and metaphorically represents a buried secret as the repository of guilt. It is first hinted at in the second “Then” chapter, in an instance of foreshadowing: “Rob mutters something about insurance and clients falling to their deaths” (61). Later in Westlands, Adele imagines the well and “sees herself standing beside it and pouring her past into it. Maybe one day she’ll find it metaphorically full, and then she can cover it again and move on” (92). This is before the crime is committed and Rob’s body is disposed of in the well. However, Adele sees it as a place where she can bury the past. She already has to hide the secret of what happened on the night of the fire at her parents’ house. In the present, Adele fears yet also welcomes the idea that the secret she and David hold will be revealed if her estate is sold: “[M]y stomach flips with the potential of everything. With the possibility of our secret being out in the open […] To be free of it” (135).

The image of a well as a deep, positive source is also used, as Adele says: “This is like the early days all over again, but now he doesn’t have the wealth of love that sustained him before I got myself together. That well has run dry” (158). David’s love for her is over and with it his patience for keeping their secret. When he asks for a divorce, she reflects: “The past needs digging up and laying to rest properly. The past. The body” (262). This is Rob’s body in the bottom of the well.

Along with the well, the wood or forest where it is located becomes a symbol of the couple’s secret. Adele paints the bedroom wall in their new house, supposedly as part of the fresh, new beginning upon which she and David are embarking. Yet her redecorating of the room in the colors and lines of a forest are a painful reminder to David: “I look at the wall and think of leaves and trees, and so will he. I think maybe it’s all he thinks about. Can’t see the wood for the trees” (66). Later, she remarks after a fight with David: “We have too much simmering under the surface; the forest green walls” (109). She uses the offer of obliterating this reminder of their crime to try and entice David: “I’ll repaint the bedroom […] If you’ll come back to it” (158).

The Notebook

The notebook is the tangible link between the past and the present as it is passed from Rob to Adele to Louise. It reveals almost everything the reader learns about Rob from his own perspective; it also holds much of Adele’s past and the key to the practice of dream control. The instructions for performing dream control make up the first chapter of the book, “Then.” In the present, Adele searches for it in the junk where she hid it: “It’s right down at the bottom […] unharmed. The old notebook. The tricks of the trade as it were” (67). Its significance is immediately indicated. The notebook holds many memories for Adele and will be a powerful tool in her manipulation of Louise: “It’s what Louise needs. I can’t wait to share it with her. She is my secret, and soon we’ll have our secret” (68). As Louise reads the entries in the book, she starts to unravel the mystery and work out who Rob is, what happened to him, and the answers to her suspicions about David. The notebook is the key to opening the past and revealing its secrets.