Sweet Tooth

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-20

Chapters 21-22

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Need for Acceptance

The need for acceptance is a theme exhibited by several characters throughout Sweet Tooth. Serena, as the protagonist, is the clearest example of this theme in action. After a sheltered childhood in which her religious father rarely took the time to dote upon Serena or her sister, she feels an emotional void in her life. When she grows up and begins to take on a degree of freedom, she seeks out people who can provide her with the emotional validation which she requires. Tony, Max, and Haley are all examples of Serena striving to satisfy her need for acceptance. She depends on these older, more mature, more experienced men to guide her through life and to praise, accept, and validate her actions. She relishes the praise she receives from them because, after a childhood of being denied such validation, their acceptance carries an even greater meaning to her. The need for acceptance does not just dictate Serena’s actions, but also her romantic decisions.

Serena is not alone in her need for acceptance. Haley also exhibits an insecurity, particularly concerning his writing. When he first meets with Serena, her earnest praise of his work disarms him. He does not seek out the praise of critics or publishers, but he values Serena’s input because he has great affection for her, and she presents him with a casual sincerity which he does not find often in the pretentious literary world. He does not know how to deal with compliments of his work because he has always been too afraid to leave the safe boundaries of academia, a world in which he critiques the work of famous writers rather than write anything himself. Serena’s praise (and the financial backing of MI5) provides Haley with the validation that he needs to justify turning full time to writing.

By the finale, these needs are inversed. Haley and Serena are mired in deceit, so Haley opens himself up to Serena and allows her to seize control of their destiny. His letter is not just a marriage proposal, but the ultimate form of validation. Haley wants to love Serena with all her faults and flaws, the issues which she has tried so hard to hide. Furthermore, he trusts her to make the decision. The closing passages of the novel resolve Serena’s need for acceptance by compelling her to take control.

Overcoming Lies and Deceit

The characters in Sweet Tooth are more than familiar with the theme of lies and deceit. They lie to one another, and they lie to themselves, building all their relationships on a framework of lies and omissions. Tony seduces Serena but must keep their affair hidden from his wife. Though intrigued by Serena, Max hesitates to mention his engagement. Jeremy withholds his sexuality from Serena, while she withholds the truth about her job from Haley. All these relationships fall apart eventually because they are constructed on a foundation of lies. Only when the characters stop tricking one another, only when Haley lays the entire ugly truth bare for Serena, is a relationship able to succeed. Lies and deceit are so familiar to the characters that they are as natural as breathing, but only when this theme is overcome do the characters have any chance of being happy.

As well as lying to others, Serena lies to herself. Throughout her relationship with Haley, she convinces herself that she does not need to tell him the truth about her work at MI5. She invents a string of excuses, justifications, and regrets which allow her to continue in her deceit, as she correctly assumes that the truth about her role in Haley’s literary career would infuriate him and make him hate her. Serena’s lies eventually become too much and she is forced into telling Haley the truth. In doing so, she plays into Haley’s own game of deceit. He has been secretly observing her while she has been secretly observing him. The lies of Serena and Haley become a double negative, cancelling each other out and allowing them to start a new period of their romance which is built on mutual truth.

Serena’s familiarity with lies is due in no small part to her love of fiction. The lies she tells herself often mirror the elaborate romances and farces of the books she loves, whether she is conducting an affair with Tony or spying on Haley. These lies becomes a comfortable fiction into which she can disappear, just as she disappears into a novel. The irony of the text is that Serena’s life story is Haley’s work of fiction. By documenting their lies and deceit, Haley can show Serena the ramifications of her actions in a format she knows all too well. Fiction is essentially built upon warped truth and lies, so a novel about Serena’s deceit helps her to reconcile her mistakes.

The Balance of Power

The theme of the balance of power is first introduced through Tony Canning, who uses it as a broad justification for the possession of nuclear arms by both sides in the Cold War. He hints at this idea in discussions with Serena, enough that—after she learns that he passed state secrets to the Soviets—she can retroactively imagine that he would justify his treachery in this manner. However, she eventually learns that Tony did not betray his country for high-minded intellectualism. Instead, he was seduced by a Russian agent and blackmailed. His intellectual justification for the balance of power is something that he invented later to justify his actions, dressing up his desperation in intellectual terms to make himself feel better. The balance of power is a solid theme in the novel, but one which is made hollow by the lies and deceit of the characters involved.

Where the idea of a balance of power really holds true is in the relationships of the characters. Serena describes her romances with Tony, Max, and Haley, providing three examples of relationships which were doomed because the balance of power was not equal. Tony was much older than Serena and married, meaning that his wife was always a third, unmentioned party in their affair. Max kept his engagement hidden from Serena and he was also her superior at MI5, meaning that he held power over her in ways she did not quite understand. Serena occupied this same role in her relationship with Haley, as she hid a truth from him which had the power to destroy his credibility as a writer. Though Serena’s emotions in all three situations were sincere, the imbalance of power created problems which were incredibly difficult to resolve.

Haley’s solution for the imbalance of power is mutually assured destruction. By arming both sides with the same destructive material, he hopes that their powers are balanced. Just as Tony justified his actions by claiming that both sides needed nuclear weapons to stop one another using them, Haley realizes that both he and Serena need to uncover their terrible lies to have any chance of being happy together. His letter destroys the old relationship but suggests that life might continue afterwards, just as the characters in his post-apocalyptic novel manage to survive. Haley solves the imbalance of power by ensuring that both he and Serena are equally armed.