51 pages • 1 hour read
Christina LaurenSomething Wilder
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
Duke Wilder’s Journal
Duke’s journal is symbolic of the past. It is an “old leather notebook” with a “faded yellow leather strap” and is filled with Duke’s maps, stories, puzzles, riddles, and codes (89). Lily Wilder carries the notebook with her everywhere as she uses it to lead her guests on their tourist expeditions through the desert. The journal offers her access to her father’s old treasure-hunting and exploring pastimes. It also gives her clues to who her father was, why he lived his life the way that he did, and how he felt about Lily. Because Lily sees the journal as an extension of her late father—with whom she had a fraught relationship—she often wishes she could “put [the] journal away and never have to look at it again” (11). Her negative regard for the journal illustrates her complex relationship with the past. Indeed, Lily similarly compartmentalizes her memories of her childhood and her father to quell her internal unrest. Doing so only augments her anxiety in the present.
Lily learns to reconcile with the past when she lets herself become acquainted with Duke’s journal. After her group realizes that Terry Trottel “took the journal, Lily begins to wonder if “there’s information about treasure” inside of it (126). She starts to study Duke’s cryptic writings in search of answers. This activity is symbolic of Lily’s internal work: The more time she spends with the journal, the more comfortable she feels confronting her memories and reconciling with her past experiences. She ultimately uses the journal to solve Duke’s treasure hunt, and doing so leads her to Duke’s final letter and gift, allowing Lily to make peace with her past.
Wilder Ranch
Wilder Ranch is symbolic of peace and happiness. Ever since Lily was a child, she has wanted to own and operate the family business and property. She loves the landscape and animals and wants to “stay at the ranch with her horses and her land and her love” (5). Therefore, when Leo leaves the ranch and doesn’t contact her, and then Duke abruptly sells the ranch to a man named Jonathan Cross, Lily feels unmoored. She feels that both Leo and Duke have robbed her of her future and actively eliminated her chances at a contented, stable life. For the next 10 years, Lily continues dreaming about reacquiring the ranch. Even after she learns that Jonathan Cross has put the “ranch up for sale” and wants “to give [her] the first opportunity” to buy it, Lily feels incapable of exacting her dream (15). She longs to accept Jonathan’s offer but doesn’t have the financial stability to do so. Her inability to buy back the ranch therefore leaves her restless and bitter in the narrative present.
After Lily and Leo find Duke’s treasure, they use the money to buy back Wilder Ranch and restart their life together there. The novel’s closing depicts the reunited couple back in Laramie, Wyoming, on the same property where they met and fell in love. These scenes have a peaceful atmosphere and contented mood—and thus underscore the relationship between the Wilder Ranch and the characters’ happiness.
Canyonlands National Park
Canyonlands National Park is symbolic of transformation. The park is located in a rural, arid region just outside of Moab, Utah. Throughout the novel, Lily, Leo, and their companions, Nicole, Bradley, Terry, and Walter venture through the desert area in search of a mysterious treasure. Their time in the park separates them from their familiar home lives and challenges them in physical and emotional ways. Because of the park’s treacherous terrain and remote location, the characters must learn to rely on and listen to each other during their time on the trail. For these reasons, Nicole and Lily request that their guests don’t “wander around” alone as they “don’t want anyone tumbling over a cliff because they got disoriented […] in the dark” (37). Therefore, they must learn to take instructions and to communicate effectively while in this environment.
These aspects of the Canyonlands experience gradually change each of the primary characters. Being away from their apartments, jobs, and communities compels them into self-reflection and challenges them to have difficult conversations with each other. When they finally finish their adventure at the novel’s end, they emerge from the park transformed. The caves, crevasses, cliffs, rivers, and storms they navigate and survive make them stronger and give them perspective on their lives beyond this remote location.
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By Christina Lauren
