56 pages • 1 hour read
Maria PadianWrecked
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A 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
Alcohol
Since Wrecked is set exclusively on a college campus, alcohol is a common motif. Padian portrays almost every character, at some point, thinking about their relationship with alcohol or about how their peers are using alcohol. By including characters of different backgrounds, Padian also shows the diverse ways that young people on college campuses engage with alcohol.
One of the most important ways that alcohol shows up is through the descriptions of the night of Jenny’s rape, which takes place at Conundrum House, a place for “people who like to rage” (11). Led by Brandon Exley, who mixes “the evening’s ingredients” (56), the partygoers are able to get drunk very quickly. This typical scene is atypical for Jenny, who ends up feeling “swirly” after drinking at Conundrum (241).
The different actions and perspectives of the characters and how they engage with alcohol is critical both to the plot and to some of the central ideas of Wrecked, which borrows its title partly from a colloquial term used by young adults to describe what happens when they get very drunk. In fact, Jenny’s rape is in part due to the fact that the group of girls with whom she had attended the party left without her, as they “were all pretty wrecked” (155). Later in the novel, one of Richard’s housemates, Joe, reflects on his own role in making it possible for Jenny to get drunk, saying that he feels “like shit thinking I might have served the girl who then went off and got hurt” (227). As each character wrestles with their role in what is perceived as a common social activity, they illustrate different, wider perspectives about alcohol use in American society.
Closed or Locked Rooms
Since much of life on college campuses takes place in semi-public spaces, many young adults find comfort in their ability to control some spaces. In Wrecked, the separation between open and closed spaces is heightened in importance through the conflicts of the novel, which revolve around trust, confidentiality, and violation of privacy.
Many of the tensest moments of the novel happen behind closed doors or in relation to locked spaces. Richard, for example, is highly aware of his privacy and actively avoids allowing Uncle Bockus “up to his room” (101), just as he responds intensely to Jordan smelling “like fear” when they speak in Richard’s room with the door closed (83). Jenny, who is raped by Jordan in his single room after he finds himself locked out of the party, is someone who prefers “closed and bolted” windows and doors (271).
Padian’s frequent references to the locked or closed nature of particular rooms can be read in several ways. Firstly, this is an obvious aspect of the general social life on college campuses; young adults who are living in such close proximity to one another must come to terms with their lack of privacy. That said, the illusion of safety given by a locked door or a private room (which both Richard and Jenny feel is important to them) is also turned upside down through Padian’s use of these references. In many moments, a private room becomes more dangerous than an open or shared one. This is an important commentary on rape culture in the United States, where the novel is set; more people are victims to people they already know or trust than to strangers. Through the frequent referencing of locked or closed doors, Padian shifts readers’ understanding of the ways that this safety is only illusory.
Touching
Through the different descriptions of physical contact in Wrecked, Padian heightens the importance of person-to-person touching so that it takes on new significance. There is only one graphic depiction of intercourse in the novel; all of the other descriptions of physical touch are of more neutral or positive interactions where characters hug, touch hands, or kiss. By contrasting the “dead weight on top of [Jenny]” (243) with these more light-hearted descriptions, Padian drastically amplifies the intensity of the rape. Further, by concluding the novel with a kiss “like a sigh” (357) between Jenny and Richard, Padian continues to focus attention on the ways that even small gestures of physical touch have to be consensual to be okay.
