62 pages • 2 hours read
Ana HuangTwisted Love
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A 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
Weather
Weather symbolizes the emotional states of the characters throughout Twisted Love. Alex is often depicted as being emotionless, which is the reason Ava and her friends come up with Operation Emotion in the first place. Ava describes Alex as a “force of nature unto himself” and imagines that “even the weather bowed to him” (6), just as Alex bends his own emotions to his will, preferring them to be nonexistent.
Ava is likened to the sun every time Alex calls her “Sunshine.” Alex views Ava as “sweet and sunshiney” to the point where he “half expected flowers to sprout on the ground wherever she walked” (15). Considering that Ava is often described as cheerful, optimistic, trustful, and always willing to see the good in others, “sunshine” is a fitting comparison. Likewise, when Alex reveals his plan for vengeance against Michael, Ava is distraught, and the weather portrays this mood in a literal sense, for the winter, which had seemed beautiful and intriguing before, now “looked dull and gray. Lifeless” (263). Ava has been broken by Alex’s betrayal, and “the girl [she] used to be—the one who’d believed in light and love and the goodness of the world. That girl was gone” (264). Ava’s perception of the world, and the winter weather around her, is impacted by the pain of Alex’s betrayal.
The weather also plays a part in dictating the mood of the novel’s last few scenes, for in the aftermath of Alex’s and Ava’s breakup, Alex is physically beaten by Josh and left on the floor of his house. When Alex eventually manages to get up and leave, he notices “the house next door was dark and silent, matching the weather” (272). The house—which is now abandoned because Ava’s moved in with Bridget—implies Ava’s current state, which also matches the weather. Outside, rain pours, and “angry bolts of lightning split the sky in half, illuminating the barren winter trees and cracked pavement. Not a hint of sunshine or life to be found” (273). While the weather is compared to Ava’s emotional state through use of her house, Alex’s perspective also colors his perception. Alex feels hopeless and lonely, and even admits that “[n]o physical beating could hurt more than thinking of [Ava]” (269), illustrating the storm of emotions brewing inside him as well.
When Ava takes it upon herself to face her fear of water and swim on her own, the self-pity she has been wallowing in since Alex’s betrayal lifts. Ava’s happiness no longer depends on anyone but herself. The storm raging overhead “abated, the angry gray clouds giving way to blue skies. And through the domed glass, [she sees], quite clearly, the pale glimmers of a rainbow” (280). Ava conquers her fear of water through swimming alone and deciding to pursue the WYP fellowship in London, which involves flying overseas. This decision is a large step toward pursuing her dream, a decision that brings hope and “the end of a rainbow” which gives her a future goal she looks forward to reaching.
Strangulation/Suffocation
The motif of strangulation or suffocation in Twisted Love is used to reflect The Lasting Effects of Childhood Trauma on Alex’s and Ava’s everyday lives, and how multiple stressors trigger these responses. Shortly after Alex has agreed to protect Ava while Josh is in Central America, Alex describes his feelings about the situation:
A familiar, creeping sense of doom slithered around [his] neck and squeezed, tighter and tighter, until oxygen ran scarce and tiny lights danced before [his] eyes […] [He] blinked, and they disappeared—the lights, the memories, the noose around [his] neck (19-20).
Alex wasn’t able to protect his family from murder, and now he pressures himself not to fail Ava in the same way. When Ava fails to answer the phone while Alex is at the Krav Maga gym, he leaves to locate her, fearing that she is in trouble. He flashes back to the memory of his family’s murder as “[t]he familiar noose around [his] neck tightened” (39). The pressure to protect Ava, and the fear of helplessness that Alex sometimes feels because of it result in an almost physical strangling sensation.
References to strangulation and suffocation in the context of Ava’s experience stem quite literally from her childhood trauma. When Ava was five, she almost drowned in the lake, and at the age of nine, her father attempted to suffocate her with a throw pillow. To reinforce this recurring image, on the night following Thanksgiving dinner with Alex and Michael, Ava suffers a night terror in which “[she] couldn’t breathe. The hand tightened around [her] neck, and [she] thrashed her arms and legs, desperate to throw it off” (187). Ava’s night terror stems from multiple stressors: the presence of the lake in her father’s backyard, the fear that her father knows of her secret relationship with Alex, and her nervousness at the necessity of revealing her new relationship to Josh.
Swimming Versus Drowning
The idea of swimming versus drowning symbolizes moments of strength and weakness. Ava starts the novel trapped within her brother’s protective sphere and remains there because she’s not able to face her fears: “Where Josh was the life of the party, I sat in the corner and daydreamed about all the places I would love to visit but would probably never get to. Not if my phobia had anything to do with it” (4). Ava recognizes that her fear of water, a result of her past trauma, is holding her back even if she cannot quite recall the full memories of her past.
After agreeing to Operation Emotion at Jules’ behest, Ava suffers night terrors in which she recalls the day she almost drowned in the lake. She recalls, “They also told me not to go near the lake by myself, but I wanted to make pretty ripples in the water. […] Only those ripples were suffocating me now. Thousands and thousands of them, dragging me farther and farther from the light above my head” (55). Making ripples in the water mirrors the ripples (and the effects) that Ava’s choices make in her own life. In her childhood, such an action seemingly caused her to almost drown, leading to her current fear of acting for herself, lest she risk “drowning” in her personal life. In other words, Ava avoids making her own decisions, for fear of getting hurt or failing.
At the end of the novel, Ava confronts her fears by swimming alone. Soon after, she makes the decision to change the location of her WYP fellowship from New York to London. Ava has feared flying over large bodies of water since childhood, which is why she opted for the New York fellowship over London, where she truly wishes to attend. In making the decision to go to the fellowship in London instead, while she’s successfully swimming in the pool by herself for the first time, Ava is “shap[ing] the future [she] want[s] to have” (280) and ensuring her future success.
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By Ana Huang
