45 pages • 1 hour read
Jeneva RoseYou Shouldn't Have Come Here
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Literary Devices
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Death
In You Shouldn’t Have Come Here, the motif of death is introduced at Calvin’s ranch house, its walls lined with taxidermized animal heads. During their first meal together, Calvin and Grace must rescue ducks and chickens from a murderous raccoon. Later, she nearly dies by a mountain lion in a pasture—until Calvin shoots it, creating another animal trophy. Human death is also prevalent: Calvin and Joe’s parents and Calvin’s girlfriend Lisa died a year ago. As the two first-person narrators’ true colors come to light, Grace discovers Calvin’s trophy case, containing the heads of three other women. She kills Calvin and the Gunslinger 66 gas station attendant to protect her identity, as she has done for years as a seasoned killer.
Capturing the ubiquitous nature of death is Grace’s fall into a pit of dead animals. This incident symbolizes her stay at Calvin’s ranch: The longer she remains, the more death she will encounter in addition to her own agenda. When she frees the kidnapped Briana from Calvin’s locked shed, she wrestles with whether or not to kill her to cover her tracks. In allowing Briana to live, Avery ends the ranch’s legacy of death.
Nightmares
During her stay at Calvin’s ranch, Grace experiences two lucid nightmares that prove symbolic. Dreams often reflect the human subconscious, warning the conscious mind of dangers. Thus, Grace’s first nightmare—of Calvin’s animal trophies attacking her—foreshadows her attack by a mountain lion. The trophies symbolize herself, trapped in a mundane existence until freed by the beast-like savagery of killing other humans. They also symbolize the heads of Calvin’s previous victims, the three women who stayed at the ranch before her; they warn Grace that she will become another trophy if she does not prey on their predator. The same logic applies to her own victims, as if they were ghosts coming back to haunt her.
Grace’s second nightmare comes the night before she is to leave the ranch: She dreams of Calvin tying her to a bed and slowly eviscerating her with a knife. The nightmare foreshadows her own plan to incapacitate him in his bedroom and slowly kill him with his own knife—used to kill his previous victims. Ironically, Grace experiences the helplessness of her and Calvin’s victims through this indirect kill.
Grace experiences a third potential nightmare: Early on, she wakes believing she heard a woman scream in the middle of the night. The novel never clarifies this scream as that of the missing Briana; regardless, Grace awakening to the scream symbolizes her opportunity to avenge Calvin’s victims.
Apologies
As a motif, apologies often follow Calvin’s attempts at romance and other incidents—including a raccoon’s attack on his ducks and chickens, Grace’s fall into a pit of dead animals and attack by a mountain lion, Charlotte’s jealousy, and Joe’s drunken attempt to burn down Calvin’s house. While these incidents aren’t Calvin’s fault, he is responsible for his obsession with Grace. As the novel progresses, she confronts him with his lies (i.e., Albert being his and Joe’s uncle and Briana’s stay at the ranch), points out he installed her bedroom lock backward, and demands that he repair her car as promised. Despite every blunder for which he must apologize, Calvin maintains hope that she will stay with him in Wyoming.
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By Jeneva Rose
