57 pages • 1 hour read
Danya KukafkaNotes on an Execution
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A 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
The Trinkets
The trinkets are pieces of jewelry collected by Ansel from the scenes of his crimes. He collects one item from each girl—Izzy’s barrette, Angela’s bracelet, and Lila’s ring—in the hopes that they will protect him from his own darkness. These souvenirs represent the senselessness of his crimes.
It is common for serial killers to take mementos from their crimes. Criminal psychologists theorize that mementos provide a conduit for reliving violent fantasies and memories. As she investigates Ansel, Saffy obsesses over the psychological significance of the trinkets. Initially, she believes Ansel is a demented mastermind who must be keeping the trinkets for twisted reasons. The importance she ascribes to the trinkets mirrors the way she subconsciously pedestalizes Ansel, making him into a near-mythical figure as she centers her entire life around pursuing him.
Through Lavender’s chapters, Kukafka reveals the true significance of the trinkets. Before Lavender flees the farmhouse, she slips her mother’s locket around Ansel’s neck, promising that it will “always keep [him] safe” (3). Later, she realizes that she has accidentally taken the locket with her. Her unintentional revocation of this gift represents the betrayal Ansel feels at his abandonment. He never gets to feel the sense of love and safety afforded to luckier children, an absence that haunts him until his dying day.
In collecting trinkets from the murder scenes, Ansel seeks to recreate the promised sense of safety that has eluded him. Each time, the stolen jewelry fails to quiet the unrest in his mind. When Saffy finally interrogates Ansel, he admits that the trinkets were “supposed to keep me safe” (270). He cannot provide any other motive for his crimes.
In the wake of her questioning, Saffy is stunned by the banality of Ansel’s motivations. She realizes that “his pain [looks] just like anyone else’s” (271). There is nothing to be learned from Ansel’s crimes. He is just a traumatized man lashing out at the world. The trinkets are futile, as are Ansel’s attempts to create a sense of safety through violence.
The Blue House Photograph
One of Ansel’s prized possessions at Polunsky is a photograph of the Blue House diner. In the photo, Blue’s arm can be seen in an upstairs window. When Kukafka first introduces the photograph, context implies that Blue is one of Ansel’s murder victims. As the story develops, however, readers learn that she is his living niece, with whom he spent a blissful two weeks in Vermont. The photograph of the Blue House represents Ansel’s humanity, the good qualities that still exist in a bad person.
Ansel’s motivations, his wants and needs, remain obscure for much of the novel, coming through in trickles of emotion and flashes of memory. Slowly, a picture forms of a lonely, abandoned, and abused child, who grew into a lost and traumatized adult. Despite being told he is incapable of feeling love, Ansel wants to find his family. He craves a sense of peace and comfort he has never known, and this craving manifests in the string of murders. Ansel’s life is the unfortunate result of circumstance, brain chemistry, and personal choice.
While in prison, Ansel is treated like a monster, both by those who idolize him as a public figure and those who believe he deserves his punishment of death. His humanity is lost under the label of psychopath to the point where he too starts to believe he is less human than other people. Through Ansel’s memories of the Blue House, Ansel reminds himself that he is capable of goodness. The Blue House showcases a version of what Ansel’s life could have been, and this emphasis on his humanity makes the state’s decision to execute him harder to accept.
Ansel’s Theory
Ansel’s Theory is a document that he works on throughout his life, outlining his view on morality and the existence of multiple universes. In the novel, it stands in for the real-life manifestos written by mass killers. Several infamous criminals like Anders Behring Breivik and Elliot Rodger wrote manifestos outlining the ways in which they felt wronged by the world and explaining why they committed their crimes. Through Ansel’s theory, Kukafka exposes the futility of looking for meaning in the psyche of serial killers.
Ansel is proud of his theory and plans to have it published. Even after his escape plan fails, he hopes that his Theory will outlive him and cement his memory in the public conscience. He wants to be known as “special, better, more” (283) than other criminals. Yet the reactions of characters like Shawna and the warden of Polunsky make it clear that the Theory is little more than a weak attempt to justify his crimes. Except for a few salient points, Ansel’s pages are rambles composed of pieces of stolen philosophy, with the aim of legitimizing an alternate universe where he didn’t commit his crimes. All that the manifesto amounts to is a roundabout admission of his regrets at the way his life has turned out.
As Saffy says after interviewing Ansel, all his speculation is useless because “there’s only this world” (271). To the victims of Ansel’s violence and their loved ones, the multiverse is meaningless because they must live in the world where Ansel killed their girls. Ansel is never able to offer a salient motive for his crime, and even if he could, no amount of explanation will bring the girls back. In the end, Ansel’s legacy is reduced to the impact of his crimes. There is no meaning to be found in his violence. If there is closure to be found for the victims’ loved ones, it does not lie in analyzing the motives of their killer.
