63 pages • 2 hours read
Freida McFaddenThe Teacher
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A 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
Nate’s Love Poem
The love poem Nate gives Addie symbolizes the many ways Nate manipulates the women in his life. While Nate attempts to convince Addie that he wrote the poem just for her, it later comes out that he has been giving the same poem to each of the girls he seduces. Nate first gave the poem to Eve when she was 15 and he was a new teacher fresh out of college. Nate also gave the poem to Addie’s nemesis, Kenzie Montgomery.
Nate is a romantic and is handsome. He uses his looks to his advantage, using it along with charm and his love of poetry to seduce vulnerable girls. Not only does the poem symbolize Nate’s manipulation of these girls, but it also represents that his attention to the girls has little or nothing to do with who they are as individuals and everything to do with how their fawning adoration feeds his ego. The fact that he doesn’t bother to write a new poem for each girl he seduces reflects that the girls are essentially interchangeable. The poem also symbolizes Nate’s romanticizing of his literary idols, such as Shakespeare and Poe. Nate is heavily influenced by both Shakespeare and Poe, two men who were involved in relationships that involved an older person with a much younger partner. Poe married his first cousin Virginia when she was only 13, and Shakespeare was only 18 when he married his 26-year-old wife, Anne Hathaway.
Eve’s Shoes
Eve’s obsession with shoes symbolizes her unhappiness in her marriage and her need to find emotional support from an outside source. Eve explains that she gets a “little rush” every time she buys new shoes. She says that she loves “the excitement as [she’s] bringing them to the counter and then as the clerk is ringing them up and the anticipation that they will soon belong to [her]” (40). This dopamine rush replaces the excitement of passion that is missing from Eve’s marriage. Therefore, it is not a surprise that Eve begins having an affair with a shoe salesman from her favorite shoe store. The connection between her obsession with shoes and her unhappiness in her marriage brought her to the shoe store where she met Jay and was the catalyst that drew them into an extramarital affair.
The shoes are also a motif that supports The Corrosive Effect of Secrets based on the way Eve hides her excess shoes from Nate. While Eve begins the novel believing that her husband is honest with her despite his lack of romantic attention to their marriage vows, it quickly becomes clear that both Eve and Nate are keeping secrets from one another. Eve’s shoes become a physical manifestation of those lies, the same way in which Nate’s handwritten poem to Addie becomes physical proof of the secret relationship he is conducting with Addie.
Caseham High School
Caseham High School symbolizes the dark reality that can lurk under perfect appearances. High school should be a safe place where students learn and grow into young adulthood. Many people leave high school not only with an education that prepares them for college and life as an adult but also with fun memories of football games, proms, and good friends. However, in this novel, under the surface of a functioning high school runs threads of ruinous rumors and predation that warps the school into a dark and dangerous place.
Addie’s experience at Caseham High School exemplifies how dangerous the place can be: Addie, a minor, is exploited by one of the people, a teacher, who is assigned to protect her. This is also the place where Addie’s relationship with Mr. Tuttle was misunderstood and led to scandal and where Kenzie bullies Addie for reasons Addie doesn’t fully understand until the end of the novel. Addie’s time at Caseham High School is the antithesis of a happy high school experience.
Other characters’ experiences and interactions with Caseham High School also play into its symbolic value as a place where appearances do not equate to reality. For Eve Bennett, Caseham High School initially symbolized stability and a satisfying career, which played into her presentation of an idyllic life with her handsome husband. Over time, the high school became the place where her mentor’s reputation was destroyed and her husband preys on female students. The appearance of the school as a safe and happy place is revealed to be a sham and just as baseless as Eve’s supposedly perfect marriage. Nate uses his occupation at Caseham High School to project an image of himself as a caring professional and passionate teacher. Nate exploits his position of trust and authority to target vulnerable female students, exposing that he is not what he appears on the surface and furthering the depiction of the school as a place full of dark realities.
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By Freida McFadden
