46 pages • 1 hour read
Natasha PrestonThe Island
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2023A 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 Dangerous Allure of Wealth
Throughout the novel, Preston explores the allures as well as the dangers of wealth. Malcolm is a billionaire and is frequently portrayed as out of touch and shallow. He spends his time “barking orders” at Camilla without “utter[ing] a single please” (38). Later, it is revealed that he inherited money from his parents without working for it and that, unlike Camilla, he never applied himself or did well in school. He fulfills the stereotype of someone who is insulated from the world by privilege and takes his role for granted.
Paisley occupies a different place in the world, having grown up with little money until her parents became more successful. She thinks that this experience “left [her] with a gift. Being able to notice who was born into this life—Ava for sure, Will, Malcolm, and Harper—and who wasn’t” (39). Building on her parents’ success, Paisley has also begun to make her own money through influencing. She thinks, “I’ll be able to go to a top college and leave without any debt. I can buy a house when I’m done” (2). To her, wealth offers safety and security but doesn’t mean that she is unkind or snobbish, like Malcolm. She is uncomfortable when Ava refers to Gibson and Reeve as “the help” and is comfortable making friends with everyone.
Wealth is also the chief motivator for the novel’s crimes. Liam sees Malcolm’s fortune as his birthright and is deeply resentful of his uncle. However, he is also angry at his mother, who continually pursues the life she was born into rather than walking away from her parents’ company. He remembers his childhood as lonely: “It meant I was alone in a house that was too big and too expensive for us. Everyone knew her parents were rich, so she pretended we were too” (288). This rage at his lonely childhood leads him to plan to kill Camilla and Malcolm and destroy the island. Harper experiences a similar rage, feeling controlled and neglected by her wealthy parents. The two of them “bonded over [their] messed-up families and fantasized about becoming famous for their killing spree. Though Paisley has thought of Harper as someone comfortable and born into a life of wealth, she realizes that money is not enough to provide someone with love and happiness. In contrast, Paisley realizes over the course of the novel that she is lucky to have a loving family and hopes to return to them.
The Deceptive Appearances of Social Media Personas
Many of the novel’s main characters are influencers, and Preston uses them to explore the idea that appearances online can be deceptive. Several of the adult characters, including Paisley’s parents and Malcolm, worry about the dangers of social media. Malcolm tells Paisley he doesn’t like the “side effects” of online personas, telling her that “In reality, people have issues, skin has texture, teeth don’t glow, and stomachs have rolls” (119). Though Paisley resents this critique coming from him, she is also aware that she and other influencers have an outsized effect on their followers. Her followers perceive her as a friend and “listen to someone online they’ve never met more than they do to their parents, teachers, doctors” (2). She thinks of this as “tragic” but adds that she’s “not complaining” since influencing has made her wealthy (3).
Ironically, Paisley doesn’t see herself as susceptible to social media’s deceptions. However, she primarily judges her fellow influencers based on their social media personas. For example, she perceives Ava as a shallow “TikTok girl” and immediately dislikes her (8). She is surprised later when Ava confesses that her parents wouldn’t notice her absence unless she’d “been missing for a month. And that would only be because the credit card bill would be tiny” (240). She has more compassion for the other girl when she realizes that she is lonely and neglected in real life.
Paisley also misjudges Liam, whom she thinks of as a “jock” who “probably wouldn’t give me the time of day if we went to the same high school” (9). He plays on this persona, telling Paisley, with an “adorable” frown, that he can’t figure out complicated plots: “My life was pretty simple before this weekend, Pais. I never had to think about this stuff” (244). Of course, Liam is actually the mastermind of the plot, but Paisley is so fooled by his persona that she is blind to it.
Finally, the most significant betrayal comes from Harper, whom she pegs as a bookish girl not capable of violence. When Harper says she didn’t bring a bathing suit, she comforts her by saying, “You can wear one of mine or just lounge on one of those deck chairs and read while we swim” (69). This shy persona is just that—Harper has fooled everyone into believing that she is a victim when she is violent and sadistic. Though she is also an influencer and is a perceptive person, Paisley is not exempt from being fooled by someone’s persona.
The Attractions and Harms of True Crime Media
Paisley’s career as a true crime vlogger is a source of tension between her and her parents, who wish that she would choose a more “normal” and less morbid interest. The novel raises the question of why people are attracted to true crime and explores the positives and negatives of this obsession. For Paisley, true crime offers a lucrative career and an intellectual puzzle. She knows that the gorier the crime, the more likely people are to follow: “The Britney posts brought a lot of new followers, but my murder stuff is what keeps people watching. Everyone loves a good killer” (28). Thinking about death as entertainment requires a certain degree of detachment, and Paisley shares that as well: “I’ve seen so many dead bodies since I started my crime channel. But I’ve always been separated by a screen” (108). For her, Will’s death shatters that detachment, and she begins to grapple with the trauma of witnessing murder and violence. She is no longer able to detach comfortably when she sees it in real life. This development critiques the phenomenon of using real crimes as mere entertainment when they have real impact.
However, Paisley also understands true crime as a way of coping with violence and making sense of the existence of evil. She confides to Harper that she started her interest not as a career but because of the murder of one of her neighbors, Elliana Delaney. She tells Harper that she “started researching crimes, murder, kidnappings. Anything and everything. I had notebooks on cases” but never vlogged until over a year later (29). Instead, she saw Elliana and her mother as “something else. I had to find out everything, but I knew them, you know?” (30). She still thinks of Elliana as “the one case I will never cover” (28). As a young girl, she experienced her first brush with real-world violence through Elliana’s death, which was a shocking crime in Paisley’s safe suburb. Paisley turns to researching true crime as a way of thinking about why people might do evil things. Through her characterization, Preston explores, on a meta-level, why teenagers and others might be interested in thrillers as entertainment. It is a way of intellectualizing a real fear, and because the book is fictional, it offers a cathartic way to grapple with ideas like evil and justice.
