59 pages • 1 hour read
Karen M. McManusNothing More to Tell
Fiction | Novel | YA | 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
Nicknames and Pseudonyms
Nicknames and pseudonyms are used frequently throughout the novel to symbolize peoples’ secrecy and multi-layered complexity. In the most extreme cases, some characters have actually changed their names officially, making their identities a mystery until Brynn starts researching them. One example of this is the murder victim, Mr. William Larkin, whose name was previously William Robbins. As Mr. Larkin, he also went by the nickname Will, but as William Robbins, he used the nickname Billy. Mr. Larkin’s pseudonyms and nicknames illustrate how he was more complex than the kids realized. At first, everyone (including the police) assumed he had no family, no social life, and no qualms with anyone, but in reality, he had all those things but was secretive about them. To uncover the truth about Mr. Larkin’s murder, they first have to uncover the truth about his identity.
Through investigating Mr. Larkin, Brynn also learns that her friend Mason is really Mr. Larkin’s younger brother, Mikey Robbins, and that Mason’s mother is really Lila Robbins. They fled Mason’s father and Lila’s husband, Dexter, because he was controlling and abusive, but they had to change their names for safety. This revelation about characters’ true identities is also important because it shows that Lila and Mikey are harmless, and that having multiple identities does not always indicate guilt.
Even characters who do not have secret identities also utilize nicknames, which symbolize the complexity of someone’s inner life. One example is Tripp, whose name is really Noah; however, he goes by “Tripp” because he is the third person in his lineage with that name. His dad uses the nickname “Junior,” so Tripp uses “Tripp,” short for triple. Tripp is ridden with secrets throughout the text, which is illustrated partially through his nickname. Tripp also gives special names to others with whom he has relationships fraught with secrecy, lies, and/or deception. For example, he nicknames the school’s principal, Mr. Griswell, as “the Grizz” after he believes his father stole money from him. He also uses name dysphemism—when someone disrespectfully uses a person’s name instead of an endearment like “mom” or “dad”—to refer to his mother, Lisa Marie. In Tripp’s case, he does not respect his mother and he doesn’t even consider her a mother. This is because she told him she was “done” being a mother.
Phones
Phones are meant for communication, but they can also easily be used to promote miscommunication, spread disinformation, or ignore attempts at real communication. Throughout the novel, phones symbolize characters’ complex attempts to communicate with each other—sometimes truthfully, and sometimes deceitfully. For example, although Tripp uses his phone for actual communication sometimes, he also uses it as a way to ignore others who are talking to him, such as his father or Shane. By putting his headphones in and turning the music up, he drowns out their actual voices so that it’s easier to ignore their demands and do whatever he wants. When someone he wants to avoid (such as Lisa Marie or Brynn) contacts him through the phone, Tripp takes the opposite approach by ignoring his phone and focusing his attention on the real world around him. At times, Tripp even reads text messages, responds to them out loud, and then does not respond in text. This shows how he is purposely trying to avoid communication with several other characters, and the phone is ironically a useful tool to accomplish this.
Other characters, such as Lisa Marie and Gunnar, use phones to purposely mislead people and lie to them. Lisa uses a burner phone to text Tripp, Shane, and Charlotte the word “murderer,” creating paranoia because they don’t recognize the phone number. Gunnar and Lisa also communicate by text to plot the lies they’ll tell about Shane and Tripp on Gunnar’s television show. They use phones to record videos of themselves telling lies, and Gunnar coaches Lisa to cry more in her videos for realism. This use of phones illustrates how video footage can be easily manipulated to makes things seem more real, even if the truth has been distorted or completely ignored. Although Lisa Marie seems ever-present on her phone, her use of it hides her true motivations and Tripp is able to go through her phone to discover her deceit. Phones illustrate the twisted nature of communication, especially in a highly digital age. In the end, phones seem to be objects at the intersection between publicity and privacy, which makes information difficult to categorize and the truth difficult to discern, even as modes of communication like text messages keep a record of communication.
Unstated Words
In the novel, italics is used to represent words and ideas that both Tripp and Brynn think but do not actually say. Unstated words function as a motif in the novel to illustrate the importance of honesty as well as The Burden of Keeping Secrets. Both characters have conversations where they’re afraid to say something or are unsure how to phrase it properly. Therefore, they tend to think the thoughts in the head, and not say anything at all to the actual person to whom they’re talking. By avoiding saying the wrong thing, they usually think they’re helping avoid either harmful communication or miscommunication. However, unstated words and silence are actually in themselves forms of communication and can easily send the wrong message or cause harm of their own. Unstated words also take the form of text messages that Tripp does not respond to in text, but responds to instead out loud, which the person can’t hear.
Tripp and Brynn’s unstated words in the present also mirror the unstated words that people did not tell the police in the past. Most of these words come out by the end—Tripp, Shane, and Uncle Nick all confess information to the police that they’d previously omitted. While they all thought they were helping back then, it turns out that these omissions did more harm than good.
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By Karen M. McManus
