All the Broken Places

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-11

Part 1, Chapter 12-Interlude 1

Part 2, Chapters 1-11

Part 2, Chapter 12-Interlude 2

Part 3, Chapters 1-9

Part 3, Chapter 10-Author’s Note

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

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Themes

The Indelible Impact of History and Trauma

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses child and domestic abuse, gaslighting, suicidal ideation, self-harm, and grooming. It reproduces, via quotations, outdated language about race and sexuality.

Gretel can’t separate herself from history and trauma—even in modern-day Winterville Court, where Gretel enjoys an “ordered world” (13), people continually remind her of her history. Heidi notes the chance that Jews might move into the building, and Madelyn mentions that she once played Sally Bowles in Berlin. The mention of Jews takes Gretel back to the Holocaust, and Bowles returns Gretel to Berlin. As these places represent trauma, Gretel tries to deflect them. She doesn’t reply to Heidi’s comment about Jews, and she gives a terse one-word response to Madelyn, “Indeed” (78). The appearance of Henry advances the indelible impact of history. Henry reminds Gretel of Bruno and her traumatic past. Alex also links to Gretel’s past, as she frequently connects his predation to the brutality of Nazis.

Earlier in life, Gretel’s trauma follows her to Australia. About moving there, Gretel says, “I wanted to get as far from Europe as I possibly could” (171). She’s on another continent, but the history and trauma she went through in continental Europe don’t go anywhere. Cait’s bar, Fortune of War, keeps war at the forefront. The presence of Kurt Kotler provides a direct, physical embodiment of her past. Gretel could avoid or ignore him, but the history and trauma he represents pull her toward him. During their confrontation at the cafe, he tells her, “You have the most beautiful scars. Some inflicted by your family; some, perhaps, by me” (319). The “scars” are figurative—they represent her past trauma. Scars don’t go away, and neither will Gretel’s past.

In London 1953-1954, Gretel’s history and trauma manifest through Miss Aaronson’s tattoo, David’s background, and the documentary. The film features her family, and the explicit reminder of her imputed complicity compels her to try to kill herself. Unable to erase her past and trauma, Gretel tries to eradicate herself.

In “The Various Faces of Trauma,” Zafar states, “We don’t move on from trauma. We move on with it. Trauma causes pain that breaks us and echoes for a lifetime” (Zafar, Samra. “The Various Faces of Trauma.” Harvard Medical School Primary Care Review, 1 July 2022). Gretel doesn’t have to vanquish or erase her traumatic past, but she must learn to live with it. She takes small steps by marrying Edgar, connecting herself to a person who not only accepts her, but who writes books about World War II and the Holocaust. Still, she can’t say her brother’s name or speak openly about the period. After she kills Alex, she can “move” with her past trauma. The death of Alex doesn’t represent the death of history and trauma, but the death of her trying to suppress it and act like it’s not a permanent part of her.

Keeping Secrets Versus Confronting Guilt

Gretel’s inescapable history and concomitant trauma lead her to keep secrets and evade a confrontation with guilt. Secrets and guilt oppose one another. As long as Gretel continues to keep her history from the world, guilt will continue to wrack her. As with trauma, Gretel shouldn’t try to erase her guilt but accept it and live with it. As Gretel has been keeping secrets for most of her life, letting them go and confronting her guilt is not an easy task.

In the past narrative, Gretel is willing to drop the secrets and face guilt. In Paris, she tells her mother, “[W]e could always leave [….] We could start again. With our old names” (142). In Australia, she has the chance to tell police officers about Kurt and, as a result, expose herself. Yet she doesn’t. In Paris, Nathalie manipulates her into perpetuating secrets, and Kurt does the same in Australia. The characters use the fear of punishment and/or infamy to hush her. Gretel appears ready to punish Kurt and herself by killing Hugo and herself, but she can’t go through with it. In 1950s London, her suicide attempt represents another form of punishment—a private way of holding herself accountable for the secrets she can’t reveal and the guilt she can’t tackle.

In present-day London, Gretel struggles with preserving secrets and dealing with her guilt. The news that Madelyn has a nine-year-old son makes Gretel feel “[t]he panic. The dread. The fear of what was to come” (82). Henry triggers her disquiet. As a reminder of Bruno, he stirs up her secrets and guilt. She senses his presence will force her into a showdown with her guilt and secrets, and she’s right. Like Nathalie and Kurt, Alex tries to manipulate Gretel into maintaining her secrets and, thereby, not dealing with her guilt. He threatens notoriety but promises, “I’ll keep your secrets. Even after you’re dead. I’ll leave your son and grandchild alone” (440). Gretel takes his deal, but when Alex’s subjective violence doesn’t subside, she picks a different path. Killing Alex marks an end to her secrets. She can look at the picture of her family and face the guilt for her imputed complicity in the Holocaust and the role she had in Bruno’s death.

Breaking Cycles of Harm

Gretel can’t move with her traumatic past. Thrust into a system of harm by her father and other Nazis, her ensuing struggles create harmful cycles in her own life that she must end. Gretel didn’t build the malignant model herself: Other people enabled her. At 15, she senses that maintaining a false identity will not produce a healthy life, and she tells her mother they should start over and accept who they are, but her mother’s hyperbolic response squashes the idea. Nathalie dramatically asks her daughter, “Do you want us both to be dragged to Nuremberg to answer for your father’s crimes? To have the eyes of the world upon us, condemning us, calling us the most terrible names?” (142). The head-shaving trauma also encourages Gretel to maintain the harmful pattern. If she doesn’t keep her secret life, violence occurs. Kurt, who doesn’t feel guilty, isn’t a positive model either. He tells Gretel, “Lieutenant Kotler, as you knew him, no longer exists. He died somewhere in Germany toward the end of the war. I am Kurt Kozel” (288). Unable to break the pattern, Gretel tries to die multiple times. Her destructive reasoning: If she kills herself, she ends the cycle.

The 2022 narrative hints that Gretel can depart from the unhealthy cycle. About Henry, Gretel tells Caden, “I like him.” Caden replies, “That’s good. I know you’re not great with small boys” (182). Gretel isn’t “great” with young boys because they remind her of Bruno and the guilt and secrets that make up the harmful norms. By caring for Henry, she pokes holes into the pattern and demonstrates that she doesn’t have to follow it. Eleanor also helps Gretel depart from the hurtful model. As a trustworthy confidant, Gretel tells Eleanor why she was in the psychiatric hospital and hitting Caden after he crossed the fence. She breaks from precedent and reveals a secret.

Alex’s character is central to the destruction of Gretel’s harmful patterns. Witnessing his abuse leaves Gretel with a binary choice: She can keep his secrets and feel guilty (as she’s been doing with herself), or she can confront him and her guilt. She chooses the latter and ends her personally tortuous pattern of keeping quiet and not standing up to predators. As she tells Alex before she kills him, “I haven’t been able to save anyone [….] But by God, I intend to save that little boy” (461). In doing so, she also breaks the cycle of familial abuse that Madelyn alludes to in Part 1, Chapter 9.