57 pages • 1 hour read
Jess LoureyThe Quarry Girls: A Thriller
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A 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 Impact of Violence and Misogyny on Coming-of-Age
Content Warning: This novel and guide discuss rape, child abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional), domestic violence, murder, kidnapping, torture, and death by suicide.
The Quarry Girls examines the systemic contributors to misogynistic violence and questions whether men who commit acts like murder and rape are born or made. Through characters like Ed, Ant, Ricky, and Gary, the narrative explores the various contributing factors that drive men to violence and the ways social expectations breed such violence as children become adults. Both the men and women of Pantown participate in violent patterns because of how they’ve been raised, and The Quarry Girls reveals how cultural messages that treat women as subservient to men breed violence for generations.
Both Heather and Gloria note how men in groups influence each other to commit acts of violence. Gloria tells Heather that “men in packs can do terrible things, things they wouldn’t have the hate to do alone” (300), highlighting the way these actions dehumanize their perpetrators by comparing them to animals. Ant, for example, participates in Brenda and Maureen’s deaths because of Ed’s influence. White responsible for his own actions, Heather notes that Ricky and Ant are “Pantown boys, preying on their own, led by Ed Godo” (278), showing how murder is an extreme version of the sexist violence that already defines Pantown. Ant and Ricky are groomed by Ed as well as their history of trauma and abuse, showing how multiple factors converge in creating violent young men.
Beth speculates that Ed’s actions were the result of childhood abuse or some other past trauma, reinforcing this message. She reflects that her father and boyfriend “managed to become decent human beings, to not treat women like they were subhuman, to not lurk or peep or overstay welcomes or force themselves on anyone” (149), reiterating that sexist cultural norms alone are not enough to drive men to violence. Likewise, the presence of good men in the narrative prevents a black-and-white exploration of men as predators and women as victims—the abusers in this novel are not born evil; they make choices. In particular, Heather reflects on the way Ricky has changed: “He looked like Ricky, but he wasn’t Ricky. The boy who’d proudly showed me his train set […] He was long gone” (279). Her memories of Ricky as a child show that there was once a humane side to him that has been erased by Ed, Pantown, and his choices. His transformation reveals the impact of such cultural notions on his transition to manhood. Likewise, his actions prevent Brenda and Maureen from growing into women, showing how misogynistic social norms impact both girls and boys.
Resilience and the Ambiguities of Justice and Power
The Quarry Girls examines how insufficient systems of power and justice can be when they are shaped by patriarchy and misogyny. Because the systems of power in the narrative are built by and for men, women must protect themselves and each other on their own. This, in turn, results in a resilience that allows women to overcome unequal power dynamics and become liberated when they survive deadly encounters with predatory men.
When Heather goes to the courthouse to tell her father about Sheriff Nillson and Maureen, Lourey compares her stature to that of the courthouse. She writes of Heather standing next to it that “The courthouse loomed behind me, imposing, glaring down at my teenager clothes, my messy hair” (181). This scene depicts what Heather is up against and how small these proxies of power try to make her feel small. Immediately after this comparison, however, Lourey notes that Heather does hold power—she doesn’t tell her father about Maureen’s diary or the copper bracelet, the two clues that she eventually uses to uncover her father’s role in Maureen’s abuse. Beth, too, holds power even in her dire situation when she laughs at Ed and sees him crumble—while he threatens her for it, she feels stronger for it. At this point, she resolves to escape. For both characters, power and justice become tools for protecting themselves.
As Heather begins to unravel the truth, she also unravels the systems meant to protect the men in her life—and not her. She realizes after Ricky’s death that regardless of the details, her side of the story won’t matter to the authorities. She reflects, “[I]t [isn’t] just that us Pantown girls [are] on our own. It [is] also that Dad and Sheriff Nillson [get] to write the story” (293). Not only is Heather forced to protect herself from murder and assault, but the existing political structure means she cannot find justice for what happened. This changes when she decides to tell that truth to the right person: Agent Ryan, who works outside of Pantown’s corrupt justice system.
Agent Ryan becomes a tool of power for Heather to use because he believes her—by sharing her story with him, she experiences real justice and real liberation from the novel’s core conflict. Justice, therefore, is ambiguous because it depends on who is dispensing it. Even Heather, who can’t decide whether she kicked Ricky or whether he fell into the quarry to his death, experiences its malleable quality and the responsibility to either tell the truth or keep her secrets. Justice and power are “abstract but important” (177) and can either be bent to perpetuate injustice or upheld to advocate for victims of violence.
The Role of Suppression in Perpetuating Violence
“Pantown keeps its secrets,” says Heather throughout the novel. Secrets and suppression are forces of violence in their own way, allowing cycles of harm to continue from generation to generation and breeding more violence with each passing year. Heather notes that “This smoothing over of reality, especially when it was something ugly, didn’t happen only in my home. It was that way in all of Pantown, maybe all of the Midwest. If we didn‘t like something, we simply didn’t see it” (137). Much like the fencing around the quarries to hide the machinery, the residents of Pantown hide their ugliness from each other and therefore themselves, allowing injustices and abuses to continue unchecked.
The self-denial of Pantown fosters a breeding ground of crime and distrust, which eventually leads to Brenda and Maureen’s deaths and the attempted murders of Beth and Junie. Because Sheriff Nillson and Gary Cash want to conceal their rapes of minors, they mishandle the pursuit of Ed Godo. Ed is then free to kill even more women, and Gary notes that the authorities are not even interested in preventing him from harming others; they simply want to run him out of town, only concerned with his violence if it happens under the jurisdiction. This is a metaphor for the harm done by glossing over or concealing harm; it neither helps existing victims nor prevents new ones from being created. Gloria admits that she should have been more honest with Maureen to protect her, and while Heather and Brenda try to protect Maureen’s reputation by not disclosing what they witnessed in the tunnels, sharing that information earlier might have prevented her death. Silence and denial, therefore, result in more harm than there might have been had these characters been honest.
Heather recognizes the toxicity of this practice and how it contributes to suffering. After Ricky’s death, she realizes that her father and Sheriff Nillson will write the story as they wish, omitting the parts that implicate them. This same principle is “why we [avoid] talking about Mom burning off my ear, or Mrs. Hansen’s house” (293). By avoiding these subjects, Gloria and Constance are both left to address their mental health conditions on their own, which prevents them from healing. Heather participates in this culture of secrecy at first, concealing information from Junie because she believes it will keep her safe.
When Maureen and Brenda die, Heather realizes the true path to protection is honesty. As she does, the characters in the novel follow her and begin to heal. Once Constance and Gloria face the truth, for example. they begin to support each other and are better for it. Through symbols like the tunnels and quarries and narrative events like Brenda and Maureen’s death, The Quarry Girls examines what happens when a community becomes complicit in protecting its perpetrators—and what can happen once they decide to face the truth.
