53 pages • 1 hour read
Blake CrouchPines
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A 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
Pine Trees
Throughout the novel, the pines that comprise the deep, dark forest surrounding Wayward Pines symbolize escape and safety to Ethan—escape from the world of Wayward Pines, which he doesn’t understand, and safety from the sheriff and others in the town who seem determined to imprison him. When Ethan finally does escape, the trees offer refuge, as Ethan knows he has “some protection under the canopies of these ancient pines” (201). Beyond refuge, the trees also offer a marked contrast to Wayward Pines’s man-made perfection: “He passed into a grove of soaring pines. The rocky ground gave way to soft, moist earth covered in a cushion of dead pine needles” (201). In addition, by situating Wayward Pines amid the pine forest, Blake Crouch evokes a similar sense of isolation and mystery as that evoked in the television show Twin Peaks, in which a small town with dark secrets is also set amid pine forests that create a supernatural atmosphere.
After Ethan learns the truth about Wayward Pines, as well as the world that surrounds it, there is an ironic shift in the symbolism of the pine trees. On realizing that the town is a sanctuary, not a prison, Ethan’s perspective on the pine forests shifts as well. He now understands that the pines, “so giant they could’ve been first-growth” (109), have become so majestic because the forest has gone untouched by humans for some 2,000 years. Further, the pine forests are dominated by abbies, making them a dangerous environment, not a refuge. The pines Ethan at first associated with safety come to represent, at the end, a different sort of prison, one that surrounds Wayward Pines.
Crickets
The symbol of crickets feeds The Need to Know for Ethan and the reader by evoking, then betraying, a sense of innocence and security. Early in the novel, Ethan hears a cricket chirping, and it evokes nostalgia—he is drawn into a particular memory of his childhood and his father. He remembers a line from “Splinter,” a poem by Carl Sandburg: “Ethan couldn’t remember the verse verbatim, knew only that it had something to do with the voice of the last cricket across the frost. A splinter of singing. There it was—that was the phrase he’d loved” (41). For a moment, Ethan is comforted by the memory and can set aside his suspicion of the town. However, that comfort is soon banished as he examines the sound more closely, realizing that its source is not organic, but manufactured:
[Ethan] leaned in to see if he could catch a glimpse of the cricket. […] Now he was squinting at something barely poking up between the branches. But it wasn’t the cricket. Some sort of box instead, about the size of his iPhone. […] The chirp of the cricket was emanating from a speaker (41-42).
This discovery marks one of the first concrete signs that something is wrong with Wayward Pines—that its surface perfection masks a different truth. It illustrates that Wayward Pines is a façade. The cricket, which symbolizes that ideal American summer evening, is as fake as the town itself.
The crickets reflect the overall strategy at work in Wayward Pines, demonstrating how creating a sense of normalcy can pressure people into acceptance of what is less than normal—compelling them into abandoning the search for the truth. The residents all know that Wayward Pines is anything but ideal, but the trappings offer enough comfort to help them give up their previous lives. The crickets, which are representative of these trappings, are therefore especially ominous. It’s the sound of the crickets’ recorded chirping that closes out the book in the Epilogue:
Outside, at the exact moment the streetlamps cut on, a noise begins somewhere in the hedges that grow along the porch, repeating at perfect intervals, as steady as a metronome. It is the sound of a cricket chirping (291).
Crouch closes the book with these lines to remind the reader that, even though Ethan appears to have accepted his role, and his new reality, the larger reality of their situation remains to be dealt with. They are living in a post-apocalyptic landscape in which some species, like the cricket, haven’t survived, and abbies supersede humans on the food chain. Moreover, perhaps worse, humanity is not free, still captive to their memories of what was.
River
When Ethan first appears in Wayward Pines, he wakes next to a river, finding himself “lying on his back with sunlight pouring down into his face and the murmur of running water close by” (3). The river runs along an open field, on the other end of which is a playground and the beginning of the town’s residential area. As Ethan’s quest to escape continues, the river becomes a symbol of the boundary between imprisonment and escape to him. To Ethan, it represents freedom, as he believes that if he can cross the river, he will escape.
Beverly affirms this association. She similarly woke next to the river after her accident. In addition, she tells Ethan that the river is the key to his escape: “You need to find the river at the southwest end of town. That’s the route Bill and I had planned to take” (165). Ethan must follow the river upstream to find the electric fence that marks the literal boundary of the town.
However, as with the symbolism of the pine trees, the symbolism of the river shifts once Ethan knows the truth. After the revelation about the true nature of the world outside Wayward Pines, the river instead becomes a symbol of the boundary between human civilization and the wild expanses of forest now dominated by the abbies.
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