50 pages • 1 hour read
Maureen JohnsonTruly Devious
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Manipulation and Deceit
Nestled into any good mystery or detective novel is an air of deception. After all, a good murder mystery is built upon a crime, and if everyone were forthcoming and honest in a detective novel, the heart of the story would cease to exist. In Truly Devious, Johnson highlights the acts of deception used by two characters— Hayes Major and David Eastman— to explore each character’s reasons behind their outright manipulation of the truth. Not all deception is created equal, and morality can become ambiguous in a story like Truly Devious.
Stevie remarks that Hayes’s YouTube show is “okay at best” (44), but “most of it [is] cheekbones and a low, sultry voice” (44). Hayes knows the power of his appearance to sway people to his side, and he is no stranger to using his looks to get what he wants—whether it be YouTube fame or help with his homework. Gretchen tells Stevie that there were “probably four or five of [Hayes’s girlfriends] doing everything for Hayes” (338) the previous school year, and these admirers all were willing to help him out because he was attractive and hard to say no to. Even Stevie falls victim to Hayes’s charm when she allows herself to get talked into making the film with him. As Stevie puts together the pieces of Hayes’s lies, she realizes that he didn’t write his show at all, but because of the possibility of a movie deal, he is “about to get credit for it and make a whole lot of money” (351) from someone else’s labor. Hayes is motivated by a hunger to be a star and achieve unspeakable fame, and he is willing to step on other people to reach the top. Of course, as Stevie knows, “Murder requires motive, and there was plenty of motive” (351) to kill Hayes Major. Hayes’s hubris led to his downfall, and as Johnson leads the reader to believe, Hayes eventually screwed over the wrong person and paid with his life.
David, however, uses manipulation and deceit to hide in plain sight. Whereas Hayes uses his penchant for lying to get what he wants from others, David is deceptive about his family to escape the cloud of judgment that he knows would follow him at Ellingham if anyone were to find out the truth about his father. David claims to be from California, but Stevie notices that his voice “[doesn’t] have that slow, relaxed California tone” (125). The more Stevie tries to find out the truth about him, “the less David seem[s] to exist” (152-153). David might be trying to distance himself from his problematic father, but his efforts have an unintended effect: With no background whatsoever, David is not seen as trustworthy. Stevie doesn’t trust David, and Johnson implies that although David’s intentions are more honorable than Hayes, deception inevitably complicates a person’s relationships.
Self-Doubt and Believing in One’s Abilities
Most teenagers (and plenty of adults) struggle to believe in themselves from time to time. The students at Ellingham Academy may be geniuses, prodigies, and deeply talented in their own ways, but they are still young people figuring out their identities and abilities. In Truly Devious, Johnson uses the character of Stevie to dive into the world of self-doubt, and as Stevie wrestles with her feelings of inadequacy, she finds her confidence growing.
Much of Stevie’s doubtful internal dialogue results from her parents' conditioning over many years. When she tells her parents about Janelle and Nate, two exceptional young minds, she imagines her parents saying something like, “Much as we love you, we have no idea why you have been accepted into this school, strange child of ours” (19). Stevie wonders if she is cut out for Ellingham Academy. After all, Janelle and Nate are geniuses in their own right: Why would a humble crime aficionado like Stevie be wanted at Ellingham? She starts to buy into this self-doubt on the ride to Ellingham, and she decides that “she should not have been admitted. The letter came to the wrong house, the wrong Stevie. It was a trick, a joke, a cosmic mistake” (24), but by then, the coach has arrived at Ellingham.
When Stevie arrives at Ellingham, her anxiety starts to get the best of her, and she remembers her mother’s final words to her: “You can always come home” (152), and Stevie feels the temptation to flee from this strange world she has found herself in. Still, her confidence begins to evolve as she wraps herself up in the mystery of Hayes’s death and the Ellingham murders, and she remembers that “Ellingham liked what they saw” (39) when they invited her to come to the school. Stevie realizes she deserves to be at Ellingham, and her mind and interests are uniquely suited to the atmosphere of mystery surrounding the school. She remembers her “why”: she believes that the victims of these crimes deserve justice and someone who can “look death in the eye” (298) and tackle the unknown without fear.
Friendship and Finding Your Place
Because of Stevie’s unique interests, she has always had trouble making friends. On the ride up to Ellingham, her mother comments that “it will be good for [Stevie] to have some friends” (17) when she arrives at the school. Stevie reminds herself that she has “lots of friends” and that it “doesn’t matter that a lot of them are people [she] know[s] online from murder-mystery boards” (18). Johnson uses Stevie’s relationships with Nate and Janelle to demonstrate the importance of having a solid network of friends, not only in the virtual world but also in one’s day-to-day life.
At Stevie’s old high school, she never felt like she could “fully express [her] desire” (38) to see a dead body or be a part of a team that investigates crimes. Stevie has had friends before, but she always viewed these interactions as relatively superficial because “there was no one who fully understood her love of crime” (38). Stevie hopes that by attending Ellingham Academy—the site of the infamous murders—she might have more luck connecting with people who share her interests. However, her first few days get off to a rocky start. No one in Minerva seems to share her passion, and her discussions of the Ellingham case result in mixed reactions: Some people, like Janelle and Nate, are partially interested, while people like Hayes and David look at her with the same amusement and distaste as her parents. Stevie is discouraged and lonely, again questioning her decision to come to Ellingham.
However, as Stevie soon learns, friends do not have to have shared interests to be close. Although Stevie and Nate have entirely different interests, she tells him that she thinks he understands her, and Nate replies that they are both “indoor kids” with “a limited emotional vocabulary” (275). Nate is even willing to go to a dance to try to snap Stevie out of her obsession with Hayes’s murder, and although he has “never willingly gone to a dance in [his] life,” he is “doing [it] because [Stevie] [is] [his] friend” (366). Janelle comforts Stevie in the middle of the night when her anxiety takes off, and she tells Stevie that “no matter what, [they’re] going to stick together this year” (154). Janelle and Stevie hit a rough patch toward the novel's end when Stevie refuses to talk about her relationship with David, but Janelle tries to make amends and maintain their friendship. Stevie may still be the only one in her friend circle who loves solving mysteries, but she isn’t alone, and the friends she has found at Ellingham help sustain her during the trials of her first few weeks.
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