57 pages • 1 hour read
Daniel G. MillerThe Orphanage by the Lake
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A 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
Food and Cooking
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of rape, pedophilia, and sexual abuse.
Throughout the novel, food and cooking is a motif that reflects the personality and integrity of the characters. This is established in the opening pages, when Kenny offers to cook Hazel the traditional Korean dish bibimbap in exchange for her help studying for his exam. Hazel notes, “Kenny and I bond over food, especially Korean food. It reminds us of home” (7). This early exchange provides important insight into both characters. It shows that Kenny cares for Hazel and enjoys making her food. It establishes that they are both Korean American and that they have a “bond.” It also alludes to how Hazel is too distracted and disorganized to cook proper meals for herself. Throughout the novel, Hazel shows her general lack of self-care by eating a wide variety of unhealthy foods. She eats day-old donuts, fully-loaded hotdogs from a stand where she is a regular, and leftover, lukewarm pizza. It falls to Kenny to make sure she eats more well-rounded meals on a semi-regular basis.
The quality behind the meals cooked for Hazel by Andrew and Kenny demonstrate their differing levels of care and integrity. Kenny makes authentic, delicious Korean dishes for Hazel. These meals contrast with the appealing-looking but terrible-tasting dishes Andrew makes. For instance, Kenny makes Hazel pajeon, “a type of Korean pancake” (128) that smells and tastes delicious. This represents Kenny’s good character and honesty; the food he makes tastes as good as it smells. In contrast, the breakfast Andrew makes for Hazel is not “quite as incredible as it looks. The pancakes are dense and dry” (242). Like the pancakes, Andrew looks outwardly appealing but is in fact “unappetizing” at his core. The meal represents his lack of genuine care for Hazel.
Mia Singing “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper
The video and audio of Mia singing “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper is a recurring motif throughout the novel. It is a representation of Hazel’s determination to keep looking for Mia even when the investigation is difficult. The lyrics of the song allude to the idea of looking for someone who is lost, as Mia herself is: “If you’re lost you can look and you will find me / time after time.”
Symbolically, Hazel follows the sound of Mia’s voice singing the song until she finds her. When Madeline first shows Hazel the video of Mia singing the song, Hazel is touched and gets “choked up.” Soon after, Hazel hums the song to herself and it strengthens her resolve to find Mia, thinking, “I hear Mia’s voice in my head, and her words pour through me […] I can’t let her down” (34). As Hazel’s investigation continues, she hears Mia singing the song in her head at critical moments, such as when she is searching Mia’s room. When Hazel finally finds Mia, she hears Mia singing “Time After Time” in the club before she even sets eyes on the girl. This is nearly the conclusion of Hazel’s investigation and emblematic of how Mia’s voice spurred her on until she found her.
Apollo and Dionysus
Interpretations of the ancient Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus are literal and figurative symbols throughout the text. Apollo is the sun god and Dionysus is the god of wine and “giver of ecstasy” (107). Dr. Mackenzie has paintings of these figures from classical antiquity hanging on the wall of his office. He explains that “Apollo represents all that we strive for: strength, rationality, order, selflessness. Dionysus represents the outside world: weakness, emotion, disorder, selfishness, hedonism, intoxication” (68).
The figure of Dionysus is also used in the name of the pedophilic sex club run by Andrew and Preston DuPont and Sonia, the Dionysus Theater. This emphasizes the “hedonistic” quality of the space. The Theater uses Dionysian imagery in its logo of the bearded man surrounded by grapes. Its motto “wine and children speak the truth” likewise alludes to Dionysus. The motto is an ancient Greek saying that references wine, and therefore Dionysus, and children, suggesting pedophiliac hedonism.
Ultimately, Sonia uses the Apollonian / Dionysian dichotomy to justify her treatment of the girls she has kidnapped. She states they chose “the path of Dionysus. They were selfish, they were greedy, they wanted to be famous” (279). In her twisted worldview, her treatment of the girls at the Dionysus Theater is an extension and reflection of the values of Saint Agnes.
Shaking Leg
The shaking of one’s leg is occasionally used throughout the novel to symbolize negativity or untrustworthiness. Hazel explains that shaking one’s leg is “bad luck in Korean culture” (100). She chastises Kenny for shaking his leg when they research missing girls from Saint Agnes together. At other moments in the novel, a character shaking their leg indicates something negative about their character. For instance, Gene Strauss’s legs “bounce violently up and down” (12) before he springs up as if to attack Hazel.
More critically, when Andrew tells Hazel he can arrange for them to go to the Dionysus Theater, her “leg is shaking back and forth” (244). This foreshadows the bad luck that will befall her there. This action’s negative connotations are strengthened when Hazel notices Andrew’s “leg [is] shaking back and forth” (255) when they are in the car on the way to the theater. Only later, when his true character is revealed, does it become clear that he was shaking his leg out of nervous anticipation of what he was about to do to Hazel.
