48 pages • 1 hour read
Melissa AlbertThe Hazel Wood
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.
Symbols & Motifs
Mother Figures in Stories
The mother figure motif repeats throughout both the novel and the Hinterland stories, helping to support the theme of mother–child relationships. The race to find Ella, Ella’s backstory with Althea, Alice’s backstory with Ella, and Finch’s sharing of his own mother’s death all reveal character details indirectly. Janet serves as a mother figure for refugees to the Hinterland, as they are child-like in their ignorance of the world of the Hinterland. The Story Spinner is mother-like in that she gives life to the stories that fill the Hinterland and repeat continuously.
Struggles with mothers and mother figures are evident as well. In “The Door That Wasn’t There,” Anya and Lisbet lose their non-nurturing mother and stepmother; later, Anya kills the mother of her stepbrother, whom she traps in the land of the dead. The queen is unloving and uncaring toward Alice-Three-Times, raising Alice to be unloving and uncaring in turn. Finch makes several scathing comments about his stepmother. At least one more of the untold Hinterland tales is about a mother: “The Mother and the Dagger” (18).
Symbols of Honesty and Truth-Telling
Objects and characters that represent honesty and truth-telling juxtapose with and help to highlight the theme of betrayal and deception. For example, Janet represents honest instruction to refugees newly arrived in the Hinterland; with Alice, Janet is even more truthful and revelatory. Her use of the truth liquor underscores her symbolic value as a truth-teller: It burns Alice’s stomach terribly when she lies or is intentionally misleading.
Harold and Audrey, though neither one is particularly moral nor virtuous, represent truth. They are among the few characters who share their opinions honestly. Harold wears his emotions on his sleeve, showing a base display of raw anger when he argues with Ella and fear and panic when he threatens Alice. Audrey represents a wry, ironic truth when she comments on Ella’s gold-digging skills and bluntly tells Alice she used to resemble a “haunted china doll” but now seems “lost” when Alice returns from the Hinterland (350). Audrey also represents a dose of truthfulness when Alice gets her on the phone the day after Ella’s abduction. Audrey tells Alice more of what really happened, including Ella’s demeanor and warning to keep away from the Hazel Wood. Ironically, Audrey must lie to Harold in the moments of that phone call so that she can reveal the truth to Alice; she tries to kick Harold out of the women’s room and tells him, “I’m talking to Olivia!” (134).
The Hazel Wood (the estate and grounds) eventually represents truth as well as finality when Ella finds Althea there dead and especially when Alice returns two years after leaving it for the Hinterland. Alice’s perception of Althea’s house when she first sees it is that it is “perfect” even down to the beautiful, manicured lawns. Inside, however, she finds a twisted array of memories and loses her sense of reality. When she meets Althea, Alice is not sure that she is real or a ghost. Later, though, Alice returns from the Hinterland and again sees the Hazel Wood. Now she sees it as it truly exists: run-down, abandoned, and not even worth going in.
Loss of Power
A motif of moments in which Alice loses her power position in the search for Ella foreshadows her complete loss of control over her actions inside her story “Alice Three-Times.” Standout moments in which Alice, usually take-charge and bold, loses the power seat include when Harold threatens her with the gun and when he accosts Audrey in the middle of her phone conversation with Alice, forcing Audrey to hang up. Other examples include when a Hinterland character takes a Polaroid photo of Alice asleep, causing the sale of the Hinterland book to fall through, and when the Hinterland characters destroy the rental car with seawater. Also, Alice loses consciousness outside the book dealer’s shop, and Ness refuses to tell where the Hazel Wood is. The Hinterland cab driver slits Finch’s throat as Alice looks on, powerless to stop him, and moments later Katherine dumps her into the Halfway Wood. That moment marks the downward spiral of Alice’s control, which she will not regain until she tells a new tale to escape her story.
