55 pages • 1 hour read
Lisa GraffA Tangle of Knots
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Family Connections
Graff’s story demonstrates how precious and healing family connections can be. Family is at the heart of the protagonist’s motivation. Being adopted by Miss Mallory and Toby gives her “everything [she] ever wanted” (167) and helps her see that she doesn’t have to sacrifice her happiness to deserve a loving home. At the same time, Cady’s love helps to restore her parents as well. Caring for her heals the painful “guilt and the worry” (211) that Toby carries ever since he put his infant daughter up for adoption 11 years ago. His protective love for Cady gives him the courage to finally stand up to his cruel father and reveal his true self. Miss Mallory also finds healing through parenthood. She devotes her life to establishing family connections for orphaned children. She is miserably lonely for much of the novel until, at last, she becomes a family with Cady and Toby. The happy ending presented in the Epilogue focuses on the unconventional family’s joy: “Cady was adopting them both. And although they were three very different people, Cady couldn’t help thinking that when they were woven together, they fit exactly right” (228). Cady, Toby, and Miss Mallory choose to become a family, and their connections bring them hope and healing.
The Ashers develop the theme from a different angle by showing the value of working to improve tense family connections. At the beginning of the story, Marigold resents her older brother, Zane, because he has a Talent and seems to cause trouble at home and school with impunity. Eventually, Marigold and Zane realize how much they care about one another after Zane tests his sister’s insecurities to the breaking point and Marigold pushes him into traffic. By the end of the novel, Marigold and Zane enjoy a much closer relationship, as evidenced by the scene in the Epilogue in which they play with the Talent Marigold acquired from her brother. Marigold also has a complicated relationship with her mother because she feels that Mrs. Asher simultaneously trivializes her goals while placing higher expectations on her than on her brothers. The way that Mrs. Asher speaks to her daughter reinforces these uneven expectations: “You’re my responsible one, Marigold [...] and I would like you to do this simple favor for your father. You’ll have plenty of time for Talent-fishing later” (80). Mrs. Asher wrestles with frustrations and resentment of her own. She sometimes regrets having children and giving up her career: “There were times when she found herself thinking longingly of the days before three kids and her own yarn shop, when she’d worked at the Poughkeepsie Museum of Natural Sciences on a scholarship for Fair students” (43). Will’s disappearance makes her realize how much her family means to her: “Dolores’s thoughts drifted to the ancient toe bone, worth millions of dollars, that she’d left sitting on the armrest of her car. Funny how something she’d treasured for over a decade could be so quickly forgotten” (200). The epilogue shows that having a family doesn’t require Mrs. Asher to relinquish her dreams. Marigold’s passionate convictions about right and wrong factor into Mrs. Asher’s decision to give the Jupiter bird’s bone to the museum, and Zane’s letter helps her reclaim her beloved career. While maintaining healthy family connections requires effort and change, Graff’s novel shows that they are worth the work.
Destiny Versus Chance
Graff’s characters are caught up in a series of events that test the limits of destiny and chance. The traveling salesman nods to the novel’s title and provides a fitting metaphor for fate in the Prologue: To the untrained eye, a knot looks like “a muddled predicament” (5), but there is beauty and intent in the intricate way that the loops are intertwined. Likewise, small, seemingly random accidents add up until they seem ordained by fate. In Chapter 4, V has a stroke and collapses on the highway. As a result, Toby has to take a different route than normal and ends up at Miss Mallory’s Home for Lost Girls in Chapter 9. He may not have met and adopted Cady were it not for V’s accident. At times, the chance actions of background characters also advance the plot and facilitate the primary characters’ destinies. For example, the man distributing flour at the Annual Sunshine Bakeoff is so absorbed in Victoria Valence’s Face Value that he doesn’t realize that he puts a photograph in Cady’s flour bin: “Nose still in his book, he scooped a mound of flour from the barrel into Cady’s container” (178). This photograph shows an infant Cady with her biological parents and thus reveals Toby’s true identity as her father. The same absent-minded man drops his book on Zane’s foot, prompting the Asher children to discover that V is Victoria Valence. In Graff’s novel, even events that seem to happen by chance bring people closer to their destinies.
Graff creates a character who embodies fate, giving destiny a direct hand in the novel’s plot. The unnamed traveling salesman in the gray suit steals Mason Burgess’s suitcase in the Prologue, setting the rest of the story into motion. Even though he seems skilled enough that he “should be able to maneuver himself and his hot air balloon out of any danger that came his way” (188), the salesman’s balloon crashes into the Ashers’ apartment building when Zane spits at him. The crash causes the Ashers to move into the rooms above the Lost Luggage Emporium, gathering the story’s primary characters in one place. In Chapter 31, the salesman guides Will to the Poughkeepsie Museum of Natural Sciences. This leads to the museum receiving the priceless fossil and to Mrs. Asher returning to her beloved job. The embodiment of fate also gathers the characters for the climax. He ferries Marigold and Asher to the bakeoff in his hot air balloon. As a result, the Owner doesn’t absorb Cady’s Talent for himself. Graff’s novel teaches that destiny is like an intricate knot that takes shape even when the events of a person’s life look like a tangle of chance occurrences.
Identity and Self-Discovery
Throughout the novel, Cady discovers herself while the reader tries to decipher the identities of the supporting characters. The theme of identity and self-discovery ties to the mystery genre and adds to the story’s suspense. Several characters keep closely guarded secrets, resulting in plot twists and surprise revelations. In particular, the reader tries to deduce the identities of V, the Owner, and Toby. In Chapter 4, a stroke takes away the 60-year-old woman’s ability to speak. The gaps in her medical chart emphasize that she is enigmatic: “Name: UNKNOWN Age: UNKNOWN Talent: UNKNOWN” (41). The other characters call her V because she shows the passersby who come to her aid a silver locket engraved with the letter. Another clue to her identity is the frequent mentions of Face Value, a mystery novel written by Victoria Valence. Paired with the locket, the author’s alliterative name foreshadows the revelation that V is indeed the acclaimed writer. Victoria Valence spends her life penning mysteries and, in a plot twist, becomes one herself.
Unlike V, Toby is a mystery of his own making. He uses his chameleon Talent to conceal his identity and hide from his past, especially “that terrible day in Africa” (211) when he put his infant daughter up for adoption. Toby spends much of the novel trying to keep these secrets from Cady, but he eventually realizes that he must be honest with her to give her the care and protection she deserves. In a dramatic moment, Cady learns Toby’s true identity as he hurries to her side through the chaos of the bakeoff:
With every drop of water that landed on Toby’s face, Cady noticed something new about him. His upturned eyebrows. His crooked nose. His cowlicked hair.
Cady turned to the terrible cake she’d baked and ripped out the photograph that had found its way inside. ‘Dad?’ she breathed (217).
The climax at the bakeoff also uncovers the Owner’s familial connection to Toby and the story’s protagonist. As the antagonist approaches Cady with the intent of stealing her Talent, Toby cries out, “Dad! Stop!” (212). By this point, the reader already knows that the Owner is Mason Darlington Burgess, a revelation that is heavily foreshadowed by his obsession with peanut butter and powder blue suitcases. The Darlington Burgess family is full of mysteries that contribute to the story’s genre and the theme of identity.
The protagonist’s gradual process of self-discovery further develops the theme. For much of the novel, Cady doesn’t know who she truly is because the orphan subconsciously waits for a family to give her a sense of identity. The bakeoff forces her to confront this uncomfortable truth. The kindhearted 11-year-old has always used her Talent to make cakes that perfectly mirror other people’s identities. Her focus on pleasing others reduces her happiness and desires to afterthoughts at best: “She’d spent so many years wondering what other people might want that she’d never bothered to figure it out for herself. Suddenly, Cady felt like she didn’t even know who she was” (209). By the novel’s end, she begins to place more value on herself and her own happiness. This is seen when she voices her desire to go home in Chapter 58 and when she considers keeping the jarred Talent in the Epilogue. The theme of identity and self-discovery gives the reader a mystery to untangle and illustrates the protagonist’s growth.
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