49 pages • 1 hour read
Sloan HarlowEverything We Never Said
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Essay Topics
The novel’s narrator shifts among the first-person perspectives of Ella, Sawyer, and even Hayley. Why might Harlow have chosen to use multiple narrators rather than one third-person omniscient narrator? What would be lost? What would be gained?
What strategies does Harlow use to keep the reader from realizing that Sam Wilkens is the “S” of Hayley’s diary until Ella figures it out?
The word “gold” appears throughout the text, acquiring meaning beyond its literal ability to describe color. What does “gold” symbolize? Analyze at least three instances of its use in the text.
Harlow employs myriad allusions throughout the narrative. Locate three especially evocative examples and analyze their contributions to characterization, mood, and meaning.
Why are Hayley and Sawyer successful in breaking the cycle of abuse that characterizes their families while Sam is not? What do they do differently from Sam?
What is the role of dramatic irony in the novel? When does the reader know more than one or more of the characters, and how does this irony help create mystery?
Analyze three of the text’s mysteries. How are they foreshadowed and created? How are they resolved? How does each one impact characterization and theme?
One of the novel’s most shocking revelations is that Hayley is alive. How does Harlow hint that Hayley didn’t actually die in the accident?
Several characters feel protective of other characters, including Sam, Hayley, and Sawyer. What differentiates the protectiveness that Sam feels for Hayley, for example, from the protectiveness that Sawyer and Hayley feel for Ella? At what point does “protectiveness” become something else, something negative?
Consider the examples of motherhood represented by Ella’s mom, Sawyer’s mom, and Phoebe. According to the text, what makes one a good mother? What qualities or behaviors do good mothers exhibit?
