48 pages • 1 hour read
Holly JacksonKill Joy
Fiction | Novella | YA | Published in 2021A 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
Murder
Murder, both fictional and actual, is an important motif in the text. The fictional murder-mystery game that Pip and her friends play parallels the real-life murder in their town of Fairview, Connecticut. Andie Bell’s murder is evoked multiple times throughout the game and is never far from the teenagers’ minds: “Pip sometimes forgot how un-normal it was to have such a terrible thing so close to their lives” (15). This parallel is important, as Pip’s growing interest in the game will eventually lead her to wanting to look deeper into Andie’s murder.
Pip’s inquisitive nature and ardent desire for justice fuels a growing interest in the game: “Maybe solving murders wasn’t too different from homework after all. She could feel herself falling headfirst into it, the rest of the world fading out” (31). This moment foreshadows Pip’s later decision to base her capstone project around re-investigating the murder of Andie. Pip feels dissatisfied by the outcome of the game, disappointed with the “obvious” and overly simplified explanation. However, the dissatisfying outcome of the game, coupled with Pip’s desire to bring the truth to light, leads Pip to rethink the accepted truth of Andie’s murder and Sal Singh’s guilt.
Pip’s Notebook
Pip’s notebook, which she uses throughout the murder-mystery game, is an important symbol in the text. Although she is initially reluctant to spend the evening playing the game, her mood immediately begins to change once she receives the small notebook for recording clues and theories. The notebook symbolizes The Development of Investigative Skills and Critical Thinking that Pip undergoes as the game progresses.
Pip’s serious approach to solving the mystery is reflected in how often she turns to her notebook: She carefully and thoroughly writes down her observations and the information she receives from the other players, using the notebook to keep track of what she knows. Reviewing the information helps her gradually piece together her own theories about who the killer might be, enabling her to grow in confidence and sophistication in her approach to the mystery. The notebook thus remains central to her development as an investigator, forming a written, tangible record of her growing fascination with crime solving.
Fantasy and Reality
Fantasy and reality form another important motif in the text. Just as the murder-mystery game mirrors the real-life murder of Andie Bell, so too do the lines between fantasy and reality become blurred for Pip and some of the other players throughout the game.
When Pip discovers Jamie slumped over in a chair, she instinctively reacts as if she has stumbled onto a real crime scene: “[H]er heart dropped, soured in her gut, and all she could see was the blood. So much blood” (11). The blood turns out to be fake, and Jamie is just playing another character in the game, but Pip’s anxious response momentarily transforms a moment of gameplay into something that feels real and threatening to her.
The game begins to affect the players’ experience of the evening’s events, with harmless incidents, such as the doorbell ringing, taking on a sinister or even threatening tone: “[H]er spiel was cut short by a loud, tinny noise that screamed through the house. Another scream joined it” (29). The use of “screamed” to describe the tenor of the doorbell implies danger and fear, while Lauren’s scream in response reveals that she, too, has begun to react as though the game were real.
As she becomes more invested in solving the mystery, the lines between fantasy and reality blur further for Pip. The climax of this occurs when she is downstairs in the basement to reset the fuse box and thinks she sees a shadow man watching her in the corner, which is “actually just a haphazard pile of cardboard boxes with a sheet thrown over them” (94). Nevertheless, Pip’s sense of threat and unease leads to her realization, at the novel’s end, that perhaps there really is an unsolved murder and ongoing threat that needs to be resolved, which shifts her from the fictional stakes of the game to a real-life quest for justice.
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By Holly Jackson
