46 pages • 1 hour read
Susan ChoiTrust Exercise
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A 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
The Pervasiveness of Sexual Abuse
Choi presents three cases of sexual abuse, one in each section. Sarah has sex with Liam, despite her expressed distaste for it and even her verbalized refusals. Karen has an affair with Martin, even though he is more than 20 years older than her and an authority figure. Lord attacks Claire, even though she has not shown any romantic interest in him and that he has good reason to believe that he is her father. Though the three instances are different in the type of abuse they depict (coercion; abuse of power; physical and possibly incest), their centrality to the three sections of the book indicates the ubiquity of sexual abuse in women's lives.
The blurring of the main characters' identities further emphasizes this theme. Although it may be tempting to see each event as an isolated incident, this becomes more difficult with the collapsing of identities that occurs in Trust Exercise. Initially, the reader learns that Sarah had an affair with Liam, while Karen's relationship with Martin is strongly implied. In the second section, Karen implies that Sarah may have had an affair with Mr. Kingsley, as well as or instead of Liam, and that Karen did have a relationship with Martin, as well as a child by him. In the third section, the reader learns that "baby Evangeline," Claire, had a mother who attended CAPA and a father from the region.
This means that Claire’s father could not have been either Martin or Liam, as they are British. Instead, it indicates that the father was likely "Mr. Kingsley" (Lord in the third section), but it does not provide any additional information about the mother. Therefore, the mother could be either Karen or Sarah. However, because of the changing number of "real" characters that the second section indicates (Manuel had three "real life" inspirations, and "Karen" was the inspiration for four characters), Choi also leaves open the possibility that Karen and Sarah are a single character. This possibility of singularity drives home the theme that sexual abuse is everywhere: Whether the events of the book happened to one character or to three or to more, they are still believable because of this.
Storytellers Are Powerful but Inherently Unreliable
Storytelling appears in numerous forms in Trust Exercise. Actors themselves are storytellers, as they interpret roles for audiences. Sarah, Karen, and the other students at CAPA all want to be stars, featured performers who capture the attention of the public. In a sense, this is what Sarah does in writing the first section of the book, and what Karen does in narrating the second section. This parallels the kind of storytelling that Mr. Kingsley does as a theater teacher and director, the directing that David does as an adult, and the playwriting that Martin does.
However, the men's work is all directed towards a present and immediate public: one that will react and give them feedback in the room. Karen refers to these men as forming an Elite Brotherhood of the Arts. The writing and narrating that she and Sarah do, by contrast, is private work: done away from the public. Claire's storytelling also occurs in the privacy of her own home, as she recounts events to online Listeners. It is only the men, the Elite Brotherhood of the Arts, who have the privilege of mounting their stories as public spectacles. This comes with an extraordinary amount of power, as shown by the theater students at CAPA who adore them.
Nevertheless, there is not a single reliable storyteller within Trust Exercise. Mr. Kingsley/Lord abuses the trust and boundaries of his students. Martin recasts himself as the friendly and harmless Doc, the victim of circumstances rather than someone who has actively harmed at least one woman. David is willfully blind to what transpired at CAPA, romanticizing the past in a way that others (particularly Sarah and Karen) disagree with.
The women, though more thoughtful overall, also present skewed narratives. Karen strongly disagrees with the presentation of events that Sarah sets forth in her novel. However, the third section implies that even Karen's narrative may have played with facts, obscuring some (Lord's likely affair with either Karen or Sarah) and complicating others (Sarah and Karen's inextricability as characters). Claire more openly struggles with this after her experience with Lord, telling the story over and over to numerous Listeners and coming up with a different strategy every time. No matter what one's stated intentions, Choi implies, we all have the desire to tell a story; thus, no narrator is ever truly reliable.
Questions of Degree in Sexual Consent and Assault
Throughout Trust Exercise, Choi gives examples of various types of sexual abuse. In the first instance, Sarah's experience with Liam, she presents the event without commentary or labeling, instead weaving it into the everyday experience of a party. It may thus pass for many readers without appearing as sexual abuse at all. However, Sarah repeatedly expresses her wish to leave, tells Liam no, and does not enjoy the experience, despite her orgasm (a physical response that is unrelated to consent).
Choi then presents Karen's experience, in which she was willing and eager to have sex with Martin but unprepared for the consequences that followed, including her unwanted pregnancy. This implies that Karen was too young to consent to a relationship with an authority figure—and that sexual relationships with authority figures are inherently flawed. Finally, Choi presents Claire's narrative as a more traditional example of sexual abuse, in which an older man tries to compel a young woman into sleeping with him against her desires. The fact that he is likely her father makes the situation more repellant.
Nevertheless, the parallels among the three characters indicate that they have all experienced some form of this abuse—and that the "degree" is unimportant, given the profound psychological and physical consequences they encounter as the result of this abuse. Sarah's relationship with Liam makes her question, and cede, her bodily autonomy. Later in life, she becomes pregnant because she thinks it is expected of her, not because she wants to be. Karen's affair with Martin leads to severe psychological consequences and to Karen's decision to shoot and injure Martin. Claire's experience with Lord increases her anxiety, leading her to obsessive behaviors online and with her Listeners. Choi leaves the question open as to whether any one of these cases is "better" or "worse" than the other, implying that the question of degree is unimportant: These relationships were all damaging in different but related ways.
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