46 pages • 1 hour read
Ashley ElstonFirst Lie Wins
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Evie’s Fantasy House
In the only flashback when Evie’s mother is still alive, Evie describes her mother’s fantasy that Evie will have “a home and a family of your own one day” (50). Evie builds on this fantasy, envisioning that there will be a room in the house for her mother, and that they’ll build it “in that fancy new neighborhood near the lake” (50). This aspirational vision becomes a motif for key elements of Evie’s character arc through the novel. The maternal origin of the fantasy forms part of Evie’s yearning for connection and a family. The importance of family gives shape to Evie’s motivations early in the novel and also speaks to the community-building work that Evie will later undertake.
Evie’s fantasy house is expressive of the “American dream.” The perfect, suburban house, situated in a neighborhood whose geographic location signifies its status, symbolizes the idea that class mobility is possible through work and perseverance. For most of the novel, this vision of an idealized home remains out of reach for Evie, even as she occupies Ryan’s suburban mansion. As Devon first verbalizes, and Evie constantly reminds herself, while she lives under an alias she can never be “the kind of girl who could live in a perfect house with a perfect guy on a perfect street” (262). Evie has internalized the belief that her transient lifestyle and impermanent identities preclude her from pursuing the suburban ideal. In taking down Mr. Smith, Evie learns to embrace her impermanent identities; this allows her to also embrace the notion that suburbia can be molded to fit her identity rather than the other way around. The fantasy house that becomes a reality embodies the emotional journey Evie undertakes. Although Evie and Ryan end up living together in the fantasy house, they have both achieved this through crime. The “American dream” ideal as reward for honest hardworking people is shown to be a façade.
Origami Swans
The origami swans that Evie leaves as a type of “calling card” at the site of all of her completed jobs is one of the novel’s most complicated symbols. The swan is a conventionally female symbol, often associated with melancholy, loss, and yearning. Evie first makes a swan in the flashback with her mother: “Mama watches me while she eats, not correcting me when I make a wrong fold, instead letting me find my mistakes on my own” (48-49). The image of the swan is closely associated with Evie’s mother, but also with her mother’s parenting approach. At this stage of the narrative, the swan represents that independence that Evie was given by her mother in allowing her to make mistakes and find her own solutions. As much as it is a symbol of connection to family and tradition, it is also an embodiment of the self-sufficiency that she had to develop at a very young age.
The significance of the swan changes as the novel progresses. When Evie flees the botched Kingston job, she sees Miles clutching an origami swan she taught him to make and she thinks to herself: “He’ll be fine. His dad will be here soon. He’s not my problem” (112). On one hand, Evie teaching Miles to make the swan recalls her own history with her mother; it shows Evie’s desire to build interpersonal bonds as caring as the ones she had in her youth. On the other hand, Evie’s tone as she’s leaves Miles behind while his mother bleeds out, unconscious, a few rooms away highlights how Evie’s attitude toward her role in her work is shifting. Evie no longer sees herself as someone who needs to feel any emotionality or responsibility to her marks; she is merely an object passing through their lives, like the paper swans she leaves behind. It is significant, then, that the object Evie leaves for Mr. Smith in the lockbox is one of her swans. The swan here represents the culmination of all of the knowledge and skill Evie has gained in career that has allowed her to defeat Mr. Smith: knowledge from her mother, but also the knowledge she’s built for herself. The swan also underscores the notion that Mr. Smith was himself one of Evie’s marks and that she’s successfully finished her “Smith job.” The origami swans are a solid, material reminder that Evie has a coherent identity, as proof that she has existed in her marks’ lives, and that she is an embodied person capable of affecting the world.
Ghosts
Through many of the interlude flashbacks, Evie’s thinks of herself as a “ghost.” In feeling guilty about the Kingston job, she muses “This is not my world. I’m just a ghost passing through” (150). By figuring herself as a “ghost,” Evie points to the emotional toll that her criminal work has taken on her. She no longer feels that she is a “real” person; she has been made to feel invisible and immaterial, forgotten as soon as she passes out of her marks’ lives. As explored in The Malleability of Identity, Evie’s arc through the novel is one of learning to embrace impermanence and artificial identities. Evie stops using the language of “ghosts” to characterize herself as the narrative develops. The movement away from this language reflects how Evie’s self-perception has shifted. By the end of the book, she’s learned to embrace the “ghostly” nature of her work—the transience and the impermanence of her identity but without defining herself as a “ghost.”
