The Witch Elm

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-10

Chapters 11-13

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

How Luck and Privilege Limit Empathy

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses death by suicide, sexual assault, and the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Although Toby is a seemingly grateful person, he often fails to extend empathy to colleagues, friends, and family who experience trauma. His lack of empathy stems from his lucky, privileged life. At the end of his story, he acknowledges how his luck “was the gem glittering at the fount of me, coloring everything I did and every word I said” (509). Toby realizes how dismissive and insensitive his words and actions can be after experiencing several traumatic events. After losing almost every important part of his identity to two crimes (his appearance, career, relationships, etc.), he still acknowledges feeling lucky—though he comes to view his luck as a fatal flaw.

Toby first recognizes his inability to empathize when his friends Sean and Dec criticize his involvement in fraud. Sean reveals to Toby, “You’ve done stuff like this ever since I knew you. Got caught sometimes. Sorted it out every time. This is the same old same old” (21). He disapproves of not only Toby’s crime but also the fact that he suffers no consequences for his actions. Sean and Dec believe his privilege (as an attractive, healthy, heterosexual white man from a wealthy family) translates into confidence, enhancing his ability to avoid punishment and enjoy advantages. Because Toby never faces consequences, he can easily justify his behavior and ignore any blame or guilt he should feel. Toby’s friends recognize the inequity this creates, and feel perturbed by Toby’s lack of care for those who do face consequences for his actions. Only when Toby experiences trauma himself does he recognize the suffering of others.

Even when Toby experiences trauma (a home invasion and assault), he doesn’t feel sympathy for those with different trauma. Susanna comes from the same privileged background as Toby but hasn’t experienced the same luck with healthcare providers, likely because she is a woman. Toby dismisses Susanna’s suspicion of medical professionals even after she recounts personal examples of injustice. He claims he’s “really sorry that happened to [her]” (144) before brushing her off and attempting to rewrite her history; his apology carries no weight.

Toby eventually learns how his lack of empathy impacts the lives of others when Detective Mike Rafferty asks him about prank emails he sent as a teenager. He sent the emails to Dominic out of boredom (under the unnamed guise of Susanna) and exacerbated Dominic’s harassment of Susanna. He realizes the similarity between this situation and his coworker Tiernan organizing his home invasion: “It must have seemed like such a small thing, just a tasty little lollipop of glee to suck on when the world refused to feed him what he deserved; nothing more, just like my prank emails to Dominic had been nothing more” (504). Toby, the instigator in one situation and the victim in another, finally realizes the lasting damage his actions and inaction caused. If he had empathized with Susanna when she asked for help regarding Dominic, he likely could have prevented the deaths of Dominic and Rafferty—and perhaps preserved his way of life as a kinder person.

The Danger of Revealing Harmful Family Secrets

Toby learns about the danger of revealing harmful family secrets in two ways: by assisting Hugo with his genealogy work and by investigating his own family’s past after the discovery of Dominic’s remains. Toby’s lack of empathy extends to Hugo’s clients. He struggles to understand why people might feel upset learning the harmful secrets of their ancestors, people they’ve never met. In the context of one client’s case, Hugo says, “[A]ll of that grief and injustice is bound up with Amelia’s existence. Without it she might have been Amelia McNamara, or she might never have existed at all” (358). He demonstrates an ability to understand and respect how a person’s identity is shaped by dissecting family secrets. He knows Amelia’s view of her family and life will likely change after gaining new insights. Toby eventually learns to respect Hugo’s sensitive approach to his clients, and is careful with his wording while writing a letter to Amelia. This sensitivity carries over to Toby and Hugo’s bond as a whole, culminating in the latter taking the blame for Dominic’s murder for his niece and nephews. Hugo knew Susanna and Leon were responsible, and that Toby would likely be implicated in the crime as well, so he keeps the family secret buried by speaking up. This decision comes with the danger of aggravating his already poor health and ruining his reputation well after his death, but he acts anyway.

Young Zach and Sallie’s discovery of Dominic’s skull is what ignites a series of dark revelations about the Hennessy family. Firstly, the discovery traumatizes the already troubled Zach, whose behavior likely reflects his mother Susanna’s troubled past (with Dominic, doctors, etc.) in some way. Secondly, Susanna and Leon in particular are forced to exercise caution and reexperience trauma regarding their part in Dominic’s murder (as Dominic harassed both of them). Thirdly, both Toby and Melissa feel as if he would be better off not knowing about his family’s past and his own culpability in Dominic-related situations. Learning about Dominic’s bullying of Leon darkens Toby’s recollection of his formative years: “[I]t sounded like something out of a totally different school from mine, or maybe out of some horror-tinged English boarding-school movie with a hard-hitting message about the dark heart of humanity” (269). Toby attempts to deny Dominic’s sexual assault ever took place, not wanting to change his happier memories of childhood; this denial is self-serving, as Toby’s memories fail to capture how self-absorbed he was. In learning Susanna and Leon’s secrets, Toby learns he never grew out of his more egocentric tendencies. Moreover, he comes to view his beloved cousins as cunning, ruthless murderers—only for his own actions to lead to Rafferty’s death.

How Trauma Influences Identity

Toby sees his life as divided into a clear “before” and “after” the home invasion and assault that transformed him into a different person. He views the night of his attack as “the slipped-in sheet of trick glass that tints everything on one side in its own murky colors and leaves everything on the other luminous, achingly close, untouched and untouchable” (2). The physical and mental ailments he struggles with during his recovery cause him to grieve his former carefree identity; he now fears specific smells and becomes easily overwhelmed by noise, as per his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Knowing how drastically his life changed in an instance causes Toby to become fearful of a future out of his control. While painful, this trauma helps him grow into a more empathetic person by the novel’s end. By learning about others’ trauma, he slowly realizes how self-absorbed and dismissive he was to Susanna and Leon, in particular when they came to him for help, and grows to dislike his younger self.

Like Toby, Leon and Susanna’s identities were impacted by trauma—specifically, trauma related to Toby’s former friend Dominic. Toby recalls noticing a change in Leon in secondary school: “[H]e had been sparky and mischievous, in constant motion [...] I caught a glimpse of him in the corridors he had always been hurrying along, head tucked down, shrunken and self-contained” (106). He knew Leon experienced bullying in school, but, being a popular student with no worries, he lacked empathy for his cousin. Later, when Leon compares Dominic’s multiple attacks to Toby’s single attack by a robber, Toby realizes how deeply Dominic’s bullying affected his cousin’s identity.

On the other hand, Susanna claims Dominic had less of an impact on her identity than Leon: “The stuff he did to me, the stuff that felt like it was turning me into someone else? It didn’t actually change who I was at all. I was always ruthless. It was just a question of what it would take to bring it out” (496). She believes her capacity to kill has always been an innate part of her identity—with Dominic’s harassment triggering it. Like Toby, she desires control and exerts control through her family (i.e., manipulating Toby, talking over Leon, etc.)—but unlike Toby, she feels satisfied in confirming her strength by murdering the object of her hatred, Dominic. In a way, Susanna exerts the greatest form of control, her identity, by taking someone else’s life and, in her opinion, ridding the world of an evil.