51 pages • 1 hour read
Nina SimonMother Daughter Murder Night
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.
Symbols & Motifs
Designer Shoes
Designer shoes symbolize Lana’s commitment to style and her upper-class sensibilities, but they also symbolize the way in which these qualities help her overcome adversity. Beth at times criticizes her mother for wearing impractical shoes, which demonstrates how Lana puts fashion above practicality and comfort. Based on Lana’s opinions about power and control, she sees high fashion as a way to signify her power and importance.
While Lana’s shoes are impractical at times, when she is trapped in the fire, it is her expensive shoe that allows her to break the window and escape, thus saving her life. She did not need to rely on anybody else, and she escaped the burning building in a matter of minutes. Lana is different from her daughter, but she knows how to use her strengths to help her out of difficult circumstances—both the fire and the poverty she experienced earlier in her parenting journey.
Ramirez’s Blazers
Detective Ramirez’s bright, colorful blazers represent the racism and sexism that she faces in her job. At first, Lana believes that Ramirez dresses this way because she lacks fashion sense. When Ramirez gets promoted after the case is solved, Lana buys her an expensive and classy outfit so that her clothes will fit her role as an authority figure. Ramirez rejects the gift, explaining to Lana that she needs to wear her tacky outfits in order to get noticed. People want to overlook her as a Latina woman, and she stops this from happening by making sure that at the very least, people see her clothing. It has already been established that Jack is discriminated against in their town because she has brown skin. Therefore, it is likely that Ramirez faces the same hurdle. In addition, scenes between Nicoletti and Ramirez depict the degree to which Nicoletti does not respect Ramirez. Both of these two truths demonstrate how Ramirez faces multiple kinds of discrimination, and as a result, she has to creatively use her resources to overcome others’ attempts to hold her back. She successfully manages this, as demonstrated by the promotion she receives at the end of the novel.
The Land
Beth’s connection to the land, her home, and her town allow her to create a life for herself and her daughter that ultimately help her heal from her mother’s rejection. In this way, the land symbolizes her emotional and psychological strength.
Lana also finds healing in the land when she comes to Elkhorn. At one point, she notes that Elkhorn gave her the space to heal while she was not at her strongest, and this is where she decides to pursue the next phase of her life. Finally, it is in this location that Lana and Beth create a tentative peace as they grow closer during Lana’s illness and decide to try to live on the same property, albeit in different buildings. Beth is holding a rock—a piece of the land—when she first starts to understand her mother’s current struggles:
[S]he turned over a heart-shaped rock she’d found that morning in the spindly grass. It was pumice, rough and speckled, its surface pockmarked by a tiny moon. Evidence of the life she’d chosen, the home she’d built, as far from her mother’s sleek hard-edged world as possible (170).
As such, the rock symbolizes Beth’s identity as separate from her mother’s, but that identity gives her the strength to mend their relationship and help her mother heal.
