52 pages • 1 hour read
We Are All the Same in the Dark
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Symbols & Motifs
Dandelions
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses abuse.
Dandelions recur throughout We Are All the Same in the Dark, beginning with the moment when Wyatt finds 13-year-old Angel in a field of dandelions, where she wishes on 17 of them. Making wishes on dandelions is a common tradition, and the novel uses this symbol to represent hope, wishes, and the possibility of change. Related to this is the fact that dandelions can rapidly repopulate; as Angel notes, “a single dandelion plant can produce two thousand seeds” (329). Angel’s mother thus tells her they are “reminders of resurrection” (270)—including, symbolically, the possibility of life after trauma.
Despite this association with Resilience in the Face of Trauma and Adversity, dandelions do not have wholly positive connotations in the novel. Wyatt’s aversion to dandelions is made clear when he explains that blowing too loudly into a dandelion stem once attracted the attention of his abusive father. He also tells Angel the stories that Trumanell used to tell him about wildflowers like dandelions when they were young, but these memories bring him little comfort. Thus, in his case, dandelions symbolize lost hope—his lack of belief that change and “resurrection” through healing are possible.
Angel’s connection to dandelions is also nuanced, developing as she grows up. At 13, she makes the same wish repeatedly—for God to give her back her eye—her attempts showing that she still clings to faith in wishes and dreams as a young teenager. This contrasts with the end of the novel, when dandelions are growing around the site where Odette and Trumanell’s bodies are found, and Angel comments that “if dandelions really held any power at all, [she] wouldn’t be watching forensic archaeologists carefully dig up a grave to find Trumanell” (329). In this instance, dandelions symbolize faith in addition to hope, both of which seem to wane or at least take on a more realistic slant as Angel progresses into adulthood. Indeed, the novel ultimately suggests that her teenage wishes reflected a somewhat naïve perspective on healing; as she later comments, everyone is “broken” in some way, physical disability or not. In this sense, Angel’s ability to forge a new life for herself by going to college and making new connections exemplifies the regeneration that the dandelion symbolizes.
Religion and Scripture
As We Are All the Same in the Dark takes place in a rural Texas town in which most inhabitants are Baptists, Heaberlin incorporates religious motifs and biblical scripture to explore themes of guilt, sin, and forgiveness and to highlight the characters’ moral and emotional complexity, particularly as they grapple with their past actions and their consequences.
Heaberlin often ties her biblical references to feelings of guilt or to violent acts. For example, Odette recalls her father forcing her to look at da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper whenever she needed to “think about what [she] had done” (106), the act symbolizing repentance for wrongdoing. In a similar vein, he asked his brother, the preacher, to baptize him wherever he killed someone in an attempt to seek redemption for his violent actions. He even believed Odette’s accident was a sort of punishment or a “price” for his killing of Frank Branson (323). In these ways, Haeberlin shows the extent to which Christian ideas of penance have permeated the consciousness of the novel’s characters without substantively addressing The Lasting Effects of Unresolved Trauma.
Another central religious motif in the novel, the reference to Matthew 18 and its claims about forgiveness, suggests why this would be so. The reference to this verse is repeated several times throughout the novel, but at the novel’s end, it takes on a new, darker meaning: When it is discovered that the town preacher was behind the tragic disappearances of Odette and Trumanell, he says “he would do it again if he had to, seventy times seven, no matter who died, and God would forgive him” (326). In this way, Reverend Tucker is using scripture not to seek real redemption but to justify wrongdoing. Just as the reverend’s position as the town preacher shielded him from any blame for 15 years, so too does he believe his faith shields him from culpability for his violent actions. Thus, Christianity plays a complicated role in the lives of the central characters in We Are All the Same in the Dark, its promises of redemption merely encouraging further violence and thus preventing real healing.
The Tru Story
The small town in which We Are All the Same in the Dark takes place becomes the subject of national attention when a true crime documentary, The Tru Story, is released. The lasting effects of this attention on the lives of those involved in the case as well as on the community overall are frequently alluded to, reflecting the real-life phenomenon of American culture’s fascination with true crime and cold cases. Heaberlin explores the often exploitative and sensationalist nature of true crime media through this documentary but also suggests the ways in which this sort of content can be useful to the justice process by bringing awareness to unsolved cases. Thus, through this motif, the novel explores both the negative and positive implications of The Public’s Involvement in Criminal Cases.
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