The Body in the Woods: A Point Last Seen Mystery

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2014

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-8

Chapters 9-19

Chapters 20-28

Chapters 29-37

Chapters 38-46

Chapters 47-54

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

The Woods

Sometimes Forest Park symbolizes mystery, secrets, and danger—this is where hikers like Bobby Balog and George Hines get dangerously lost, and where Miranda Wyatt, one of Becker’s murder victims, is found. However, at other times, this forest offers protection and care—it nurtures Ruby’s love of birding, has trail runners can use to better their health, allows outlaws like Jay Adams to skirt drug laws, and gives Ruby a place to hide from Becker.

As a wild, untamed setting, the woods give the mystery a setting where characters can be destabilized by unforeseen obstacles, uncontrollable weather, and things lurking in the dark. At the same time, as the protagonists master their SAR skills, the woods is the best place for their new abilities to be tested—knowing they can survive in the woods is the best way for each teen to build confidence.

Cage-Free Eggs

As Becker eats breakfast, he meticulously dissects the cage-free eggs he buys from the farmers’ market. The eggs symbolize his need to collect, and his chillingly clinical approach—the same one he uses to write about the girls he kills—marks him as sociopathically detached and unhinged: “each shell had been a different color, one creamy white, one brick colored, and one blue-green. Inside, they were all the same, with yolks an orange-yellow to rival a summer sun” (107). The more varied and rare Becker’s collection grows, the more he wants to murder.

The Brown Spiral Notebook

The brown birding journal that belongs to Caleb Becker offers horrifying evidence of his crimes. Instead of using it to record birds he watches, he fills in the pre-configured categories with aspects of the girls he kills. The notebook helps him completely detach from seeing his murder victims as people—instead, he categorizes them according to avian qualities in a nightmarish version of how birders organize their life lists.

Dark and Light

Darkness and light is an ongoing motif in the novel, often highlighting what is hidden and what is seen. One salient example of the contrast happens during Alexis’s mother’s mania. Tanya wakes Alexis in the middle of the night, demanding they make cookies. What would be an innocuous activity in the light of day becomes menacing and unsettling at night, when the women should be sleeping. As Alexis tries to calm her mother down by taking her to the grocery store to buy cookie ingredients, the bright lights in the Safeway become a threatening element, symbolizing the spotlight Alexis feels from other people’s stares and disapproval at her mother’s antics.