The Witch Elm

“Worrying had always seemed to me like a laughable waste of time and energy; so much simpler to go happily about your business and deal with the problem when it arose, if it did, which it mostly didn’t.”

Toby’s feelings about worry demonstrate his privilege. As an attractive, healthy, heterosexual white man from a wealthy family, he faces few challenges before being assaulted in his apartment. He never experiences consequences for his actions, giving him the naive impression that life is easy enough to “deal with.”

“What are you talking about? They could have gone to school. Instead of spending their time sniffing glue and breaking the wing mirrors off cars. They could have got jobs. The recession’s over; there’s no reason for anyone to be stuck in the muck unless they actually choose to be.”

Toby demonstrates his lack of empathy for people who experience less privilege than him. He fails to comprehend realities that differ from his own. He doesn’t recognize how little control other people have over their circumstances until he himself loses control to physical and mental injuries.

“[W]hat I remember most vividly when I think of those first couple of days, not the pain; what I remember is the sensation that I was being methodically pulled apart into gobbets, body and mind, as easily as a wet tissue, and that there was nothing at all I could do to resist.”

Toby recounts how his trauma drastically changes his identity. He feels a complete lack of control over the person he becomes. This quote contrasts with Toby’s earlier philosophy about people needing to take control over their lives.

“Once the fear took hold, I was fucked. I’d never known anything like it could exist: all-consuming, ravenous, a whirling black vortex that sucked me under so completely and mercilessly that it truly felt like I was being devoured alive, bones splintered, marrow sucked.”

Toby’s fear is one of many symptoms he will later identify as his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). His fear of being attacked again impacts nearly every aspect of his life: his career, relationships, sleep, and ability to leave his apartment. This experience gives Toby a reference point, helping him understand and sympathize with the terror his cousins later describe.

“[N]ow every second was part of an inexorable tide drawing me farther and farther from that guy whom I had every right to be and who was gone for good, left behind on the other side of that unbreakable sheet of glass.”

Toby realizes he can never return to his former identity after being attacked. He feels as if a version of himself has died, and he grieves the loss.

“That sharp skimming glance, from his gray eyes. None of us had ever been able to get anything past that glance. Sunday lunch, that glance sweeping across the cousins and catching on sixteen-year-old me expertly concealing a hangover.”

While Hugo gives his niece and nephews a liberal amount of freedom while they are at Ivy House, he closely watches and gently nudges them to make good choices. Toby eventually learns that Hugo watched Susanna and Leon kill Dominic, erasing the belief that he was oblivious to his family’s happenings. Hugo proves to be an observant, thoughtful, and protective character.

“The thing I always forget about the Ivy House garden, the one that catches me afresh every time, is the light. It’s different from anywhere else, grained like the bleached light in an old home movie of summer, as if it were emanating from the scene itself rather than entering from any outside source.”

Toby views Ivy House, especially its garden, with the glow of an idyllic childhood. Tana French uses descriptions of light and darkness to develop the setting. The garden becomes darker as crimes unfold, and Toby’s impression of the house changes as well.

“[S]he had always liked getting up in arms about injustices, real and imagined, and I’d never done anything but roll my eyes cheerfully and let it go. The same with Leon: he had always been a moody little bollix.”

Toby’s impressions of his cousins Susanna and Leon demonstrate his lack of empathy and respect for their well-being. He fails to relate to Susanna’s desire to see justice in an unjust world because he cares little for people who don’t share his rights and standard of living. He feels personally offended by Leon’s bad moods, never once considering why Leon feels upset.

“The thought of one of these guys wandering around the garden while we slept made my teeth clench—I had been checking my watch more and more obsessively, maybe at six o’clock they would fuck off and leave us to ourselves again, maybe at seven, surely to Jesus they had to knock off by eight—but we very obviously didn’t have a say in this.”

The police investigation of Ivy House resembles Toby’s home invasion, his complete lack of control. Toby’s rage at the officials investigating Dominic’s murder resembles the rage he feels for his attackers. To him, the identity of Ivy House changes from a place of innocence to the scene of a brutal murder.

“Rafferty turned his eyes on me. They were golden as a hawk’s and with the same impersonal, impartial ruthlessness, a creature simply doing what he was for. I realized that I was terrified of him.”

The power dynamic that Detective Mike Rafferty establishes feels predatory (hawklike) to Toby. Though he is never impolite, Rafferty exerts control over the people and places he encounters. Toby’s fear of him helps establish Toby as a red herring.

“I knew I was stammering and babbling, I could see Kerr’s face getting a subtle look of very sympathetic understanding like it was dawning on him that I was a bit unfortunate. I wanted to grab him by the collar and shout in his face, get it into his thick head that that was nothing to do with me, it was all because of two worthless skanger pricks and he should be fucking giving them that look, not me.”

Toby experiences the frustrating injustice of being judged for his disabilities. He feels the detectives should hold his attackers accountable for his physical and mental limitations. The fact that he is being treated as a suspect in one case while his attackers from another case run free infuriates him.

“He wasn’t a nice fella, this Dominic, was he? The stories people told us…I thought I’d seen a bit of bullying at my school, but man, some of this stuff gave me the shivers.”

All the characters judge Dominic for his evils. Dominic demonstrates how a person’s actions and reputation exist long after death. Later, Toby contemplates how others would judge him if he were to die. Although Hugo’s family sees his death as a tragedy (after he takes the blame for Dominic’s murder), he will forever be remembered as a murderer.

“‘I suppose the truth is that I’ve never been a man of action.’ That quirk of a smile again, eyebrow lifting. ‘A man of inertia, more like. Don’t rock the boat; everything will come right in the end, if you just let it.’”

Hugo believes a person’s identity is shaped by their reactions to extreme circumstances. Either out of contentment or fear of discovering his true self, he chooses to live a simple, uncomplicated life. He never marries or travels, and spends most of his life investigating the secrets of other people.

“He just needs to get his head round the idea that other people are real too, and he’ll be fine. He was doing a lot better, but finding the skull threw him for a total loop. If other people are real, then obviously that means the skull was a real person, and that’s way more than he can handle.”

Through parenting Zach, Susanna demonstrates how empathy is a learned skill, not naturally occurring in humans. Children are naturally self-absorbed, but through life experiences, they develop an understanding of and respect for realities that differ from their own. Finding Dominic’s skull introduces Zach to the concepts of violence and death.

“As far as I was concerned, the old bond had hung on right through secondary school, until college hit and we all went our separate ways—I had felt exactly the same as always about the two of them, I’d assumed they felt the same about me, why wouldn’t they?”

Toby’s understanding of his relationships with his cousins changes when he views their bonds through Susanna’s and Leon’s perspectives. He only ever considered his own opinions of his cousins, never stopping to consider what his cousins think of him. In learning to consider the experiences and feelings of others, he develops the ability to be more introspective.

“It was looking like Melissa was right, but I wasn’t clear on how she would know that stuff: even if I had been a self-absorbed teenage brat, that had been years before I met her.”

Even though Toby lies to Melissa and tries to hide things from her, she identifies his callous, opportunistic nature. Melissa’s observation skills and ability to read people make her empathetic. She recognizes Toby’s egotism, but never criticizes or tries to change this side of him.

“Or say I’d got lucky and ended up with a decent doctor. Then I wouldn’t have done it. But I’d still be the same person; the reason I hadn’t done it wouldn’t be because I was more virtuous, it would just be dumb luck. Would I be a good person then?”

Susanna’s beliefs about identity differ from other characters. She doesn’t believe others’ abuse made her a more ruthless person; rather, her ruthlessness is an innate part of her identity. She takes full accountability for her actions and identity.

“I was blown away, yet again, by Melissa. She had to be wondering what the hell I was trying to do, she hadn’t wanted me to do it to begin with, and yet here she was throwing herself into the breach, heart and soul, to help me do it.”

Toby crosses Melissa’s boundaries by asking her to help him interrogate his cousins. She has no interest in becoming entangled in a murder investigation and feels uncomfortable that her boyfriend is acting like a detective. She makes sacrifices for Toby, but he is unwilling to respect her wishes when they differ from his own.

“And with that, finally, it all fell into place. It had taken me a gobsmacking amount of time to notice the one dazzlingly obvious reason why all these people might think I’d killed Dominic: because I had.”

Toby becomes his own red herring. His lapses in and loss of memory, as well as his newfound dislike of his former self, lead him to believe he was responsible for Dominic’s murder. His lack of faith in his morality isn’t unwarranted; he eventually allows his anger to get the best of him and kills Rafferty.

“Hugo’s death was my fault, maybe not the fact that he had died but the way of it. If he hadn’t rung the detectives, he would have been at home in bed when the hemorrhage hit. He would have died there, with familiar smells and his own duvet, with dawn and birds starting outside the window.”

Toby shows growth when he accepts responsibility for the way in which Hugo died. Prior to experiencing trauma, he was quick to justify his decisions and ignore the consequences he created for others. Accepting blame for Hugo’s end demonstrates he learned to connect his actions to others’ outcomes.

“[I]t wouldn’t be remotely relevant if he had; this type of cancer isn’t linked to smoking. It’s just a, a, a random vicious bastard. Hugo just had bad luck; a bad roll of the dice. But we’re so desperate, aren’t we, to believe that bad luck only happens to people who deserve it. People genuinely can’t take it in that someone could die of cancer without bloody well smoking.”

Cigarettes symbolize choosing the lesser of two evils to exhibit control. In this quote, Toby’s father points out how people often believe that adverse outcomes, like terminal illness, can be controlled and avoided. People choose to think Hugo’s unhealthy decisions caused his cancer because this is easier for them to believe than the idea of their own fates being left to chance.

“‘Oh noes, the cops might possibly figure out that Dominic didn’t kill himself and they might possibly tie it to us and they might possibly get enough evidence to arrest us and we might possibly be found guilty’ was a lot less scary than ‘Dominic Ganly is going to rape me or kill me any day now.’”

Susanna explains the relief she felt after killing Dominic, validating her claim that she did so out of self-defense. Like many other characters, she hates feeling powerless, and takes charge of her fate by killing a deplorable man and owning up to her decision (albeit without intervening in Hugo’s wrongful arrest).

“[T]he world’s full of people like him. If there’s absolutely fuck-all you can do about them except lie back and take it, and then listen to people explaining how it’s not a big deal? Bring kids into that? Now […] at least I know, if anyone tries to fuck with my kids, I’ve got a decent shot at taking them down.”

Killing Dominic confirms Susanna’s belief that she is a ruthless person capable of defending herself by any means. While she doesn’t believe Dominic influences her identity, she now feels more confident in her capabilities because of him.