12 Analytical Essay Prompts for Hexed by Emily McIntire

Essay Prompts for Hexed

The prompts below target specific moments, patterns, and tensions within Hexed. Use the supplied chapter evidence to build arguments grounded in the text.

1. The Mermaid Metaphor and Emotional Suppression

Throughout Hexed, the epigraph from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”—“a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more”—functions as more than a decorative quotation. Trace how the inability to cry, and the broader imagery of silent, hidden suffering, shapes Venesa’s psychology and her relationship with Enzo. Analyze the moment when Venesa finally breaks down and what that breakthrough signifies for her character arc. Avoid treating crying simply as a release; examine it as a political act in a world that punishes female vulnerability.

Why This Prompt Matters This question pushes beyond plot summary to examine the book’s central controlling metaphor. It requires students to connect epigraph to character, explore symbolism, and analyze how a recurring motif is resolved at the structural climax.

Defensible Thesis Direction Venesa’s tearlessness is both a trauma response to her father’s violence and a survival mechanism within the Kingston family’s patriarchal structure. The moment she weeps after Enzo’s rejection represents not weakness but the first authentic expression of self she has permitted since childhood, coinciding with her decision to stop performing for her uncle.

Evidence Leads

Chapter 2 (Epigraph): The Andersen quotation establishes silent suffering as the governing idea.
Chapter 21 (17. Enzo): Venesa reveals her father would beat her mother when she cried, providing the psychological origin of her suppression.
Chapter 47 (47. Venesa): Venesa breaks down after Enzo walks away, crying for the first time since childhood.
Chapter 38 (34. Venesa): The seashell necklace gift overwhelms her with emotion, but she still cannot cry, showing the barrier remains until absolute devastation shatters it.

2. The Causal Web of Betrayal: Trent Kingston’s Orchestration

Trent Kingston is not merely an antagonist but the hidden author of the novel’s central tragedies. Map the chain of cause and effect that runs from Trent’s murder of his father and sister-in-law to the final confrontation. Argue whether Trent’s downfall results from his own decisions or from Venesa’s agency. Pay close attention to how secrets buried in the past determine the events of the present.

Why This Prompt Matters This prompt builds skills in tracing causality across a complex narrative. Students must distinguish between correlation and causation, analyze motive, and evaluate whether the resolution feels earned by the characters’ choices or imposed by the author.

Defensible Thesis Direction Trent’s destruction is the inevitable result of a paranoid, control-obsessed patriarch who mistakes fear for loyalty. Venesa’s revenge is not an external intrusion but the logical product of Trent’s own system, which taught her to kill and then gave her the ultimate reason to use that training against him.

Evidence Leads

Chapter 43 (39. Venesa): Bastien reveals Trent likely killed his own father and destroyed the irrevocable trust that should have passed the empire to Venesa’s mother.
Chapter 30 (26. Venesa): Harald discloses that Trent held his gambling debts and implies Trent killed Venesa’s mother.
Chapter 37 (33. Venesa): Trent admits he arranged the murder through the Atlantis MC, calling Venesa an ungrateful tool.
Chapter 57 (53. Venesa): Venesa injects Trent with stonefish venom, using the very skills he required of her.

3. The Boardwalk as Symbolic Geography

The Atlantic Cove boardwalk appears at multiple critical junctures, including Venesa’s childhood memories, her tour with Enzo, the Ferris wheel scene, and the epilogue proposal. Analyze how McIntire uses the boardwalk to represent competing forces—nostalgia and pain, freedom and entrapment, performance and authenticity. How does the setting evolve in meaning as Venesa’s relationship with Enzo deepens?

Why This Prompt Matters This prompt develops skill in reading setting as symbolic rather than decorative. Students learn to track a recurring location across a text and explain how its meaning shifts in relation to character development.

Defensible Thesis Direction The boardwalk initially symbolizes Venesa’s childhood deprivation and the transactional nature of her mother’s love. Through Enzo’s interventions—the squid prize, the Ferris wheel, and ultimately the proposal—the space is reclaimed as a site where she is seen and chosen, not merely tolerated.

Evidence Leads

Chapter 12 (8. Venesa): Venesa avoids the Ice Shack and reveals her mother only expressed love openly one day a year.
Chapter 22 (18. Enzo): Enzo wins her a giant squid plush at a carnival game and confronts Rusty.
Chapter 23 (19. Venesa): The Ferris wheel scene brings Enzo’s fear of heights and Venesa’s trauma into a confined, vulnerable space.
Chapter 59 (Epilogue): Enzo proposes at the Sea Wheel under a full moon, deliberately replacing painful memories with a new one.

4. Fisher Engle: The Architecture of a Betrayal

Fisher’s betrayal, when it arrives, recontextualizes every earlier moment of camaraderie. Re-examine Fisher’s scenes in the first half of the novel with the knowledge that he is feeding information to Trent. Consider the mechanics of blackmail, the fabricated pregnancy, and Fisher’s claim that he had no choice. Was Fisher a victim of Trent, a willing participant, or something in between?

Why This Prompt Matters This prompt exercises re-reading and textual analysis, asking students to identify dramatic irony and evaluate the ethical gray areas of a supporting character’s choices rather than dismissing him as a simple traitor.

Defensible Thesis Direction Fisher is a study in how Trent’s power operates through manufactured obligation. The fabricated pregnancy exploits Fisher’s longing for family and belonging, making him simultaneously victim and perpetrator—a mirror that forces Venesa to confront her own blind loyalty to the same system.

Evidence Leads

Chapter 9 (5. Venesa): Fisher arrives to escort Venesa away from the dinner, an apparent rescue that now reads as information-gathering.
Chapter 54 (50. Venesa): Fisher confesses Trent blackmailed him with photos of a child he was told is his daughter, then reveals Aria’s pregnancy was a lie.
Chapter 14 (10. Venesa): Fisher alerts Venesa to the card counter, a scene that appears to show partnership but now raises questions about his knowledge of Trent’s agenda.
Chapter 54 (50. Venesa): Fisher admits he provided the information that led Carlos Marino to disrupt Venesa and Enzo in New York.

5. Forbidden Desire and the Architecture of Delay

McIntire constructs Venesa and Enzo’s relationship through a pattern of near-misses, interrupted intimacy, and deliberate postponement. Analyze three key moments where consummation is forestalled and explain what narrative work this delay performs. How does the prolonged tension shape your understanding of consent, power, and the characters’ individual transformations?

Why This Prompt Matters This question examines narrative structure as an intentional craft choice. Students must analyze pacing, reader expectation, and the difference between gratuitous delay and meaningful restraint that deepens character.

Defensible Thesis Direction The repeated postponement of physical consummation functions as a moral marker for both characters: Venesa refuses to become “an afterthought” to an engaged man, and Enzo refuses to treat her as a transaction. The delay invests their eventual union with the weight of choice, distinguishing their bond from the arranged, obligatory engagement Enzo endures with Aria.

Evidence Leads

Chapter 20 (16. Venesa): Venesa says, “In a different life, I’d ask you to touch me,” but refuses to act because she is not a cheater and will not become an afterthought.
Chapter 23 (19. Venesa): On the Ferris wheel, Enzo asks her to speak or he will kiss her; Venesa pushes him away despite her desire.
Chapter 33 (29. Venesa): Enzo cages Venesa against a wall at the engagement party, confessing intense desire but refusing to touch her.
Chapter 42 (38. Enzo): The consummation scene arrives only after the engagement is revealed as a fraud.

6. Aria and Venesa: The Cousin Mirror

Aria Kingston and Venesa Andersen are positioned as foils from the cafeteria scene onward. Examine how their contrasting relationships with Uncle T, with Enzo, and with their own identities illuminate the novel’s commentary on patriarchal family structures. Pay special attention to Aria’s revelation as Trent’s secret sidekick and how it redefines her earlier cruelty.

Why This Prompt Matters This prompt builds comparative character analysis skills. Students must move beyond “hero versus villain” to see how two women respond differently to the same oppressive system, and how their fates comment on survival strategies within patriarchy.

Defensible Thesis Direction Aria and Venesa represent two adaptive responses to Trent’s power: Aria performs compliance and weaponizes her status as the legitimate daughter, while Venesa performs usefulness and weaponizes her skills as an assassin. Both performances are ultimately cages built by the same patriarch, though Venesa’s cage forces her to develop an independence Aria never achieves.

Evidence Leads

Chapter 9 (5. Venesa): Flashback to Aria humiliating Venesa in the cafeteria, calling her an “urchin.”
Chapter 53 (49. Venesa): Aria reveals she has been Uncle T’s secret sidekick for a full year and was the original attacker who tried to kill Enzo.
Chapter 58 (54. Venesa): Aria dies at Venesa’s hand, and Venesa feels all her accumulated animosity bleed away.
Chapter 57 (53. Venesa): Venesa injects Aria with a compound causing vocal paralysis as poetic punishment.

7. The Playlist as Narrative Prologue

Hexed opens with a ten-song playlist before any narrative events occur. Analyze the playlist as an intentional structural choice that establishes mood, foreshadows arcs, and invites a participatory reading experience. Select two songs and trace their thematic links to specific scenes.

Why This Prompt Matters This prompt validates non-traditional textual elements as objects of literary analysis. Students learn to treat paratext—the material surrounding a narrative—as meaningful rather than decorative, and to build arguments connecting allusion to plot.

Defensible Thesis Direction The playlist functions as an emotional overture, compressing the novel’s core tensions—villainy and vulnerability, control and surrender, isolation and union—into a sonic prologue. The inclusion of “Poor Unfortunate Souls” announces Venesa’s self-identification with Ursula, while the shift to “All of Me” foreshadows the total mutual possession of the final chapters.

Evidence Leads

Chapter 1 (Playlist): The ten-song sequence runs from “Poor Unfortunate Souls” to “All of Me.”
Chapter 4 (Prologue): Venesa describes her potions and identifies with witch imagery, linking to the Ursula motif.
Chapter 42 (38. Enzo): Venesa and Enzo exchange possessive declarations, both claiming each other.

8. Shared Violence as Intimacy: The Basement Interrogations

In three key scenes—the card-counter Sean’s mutilation, the interrogation of Harald, and the final confrontation with Trent—Venesa and Enzo participate in violence together. Analyze the role of shared violence in building their trust and attraction. What does it mean that Enzo’s declaration of love is linked to giving Venesa her father as a “birthday gift”?

Why This Prompt Matters This prompt requires students to grapple with uncomfortable material analytically rather than dismissing it. It tests the ability to analyze a dark romance’s internal logic without moralizing from outside the text’s own framework.

Defensible Thesis Direction Violence in Hexed functions as a site of mutual recognition and honesty. Unlike every other relationship built on performance and deception, Venesa and Enzo’s shared brutality strips away masks. The birthday gift of Harald is Enzo’s proof that he sees her fully—her rage, her trauma, her need for vengeance—and finds it worthy of devotion, not shame.

Evidence Leads

Chapter 16 (12. Venesa): Venesa severs Sean’s hand while Enzo assists, and they share charged glances throughout.
Chapter 30 (26. Venesa): Enzo presents Harald, bound and beaten, as a birthday gift, having brutalized him himself.
Chapter 31 (27. Enzo): After the murder, Enzo confesses his forbidden desire and gives her a near-kiss.
Chapter 57 (53. Venesa): Venesa injects Uncle T with stonefish venom, and Enzo arrives to find the scene resolved.

9. The Irrevocable Trust: Documentation as Power

The hidden wills inside the Kingston family painting function as a plot device that transforms the narrative stakes from personal revenge to rightful inheritance. Analyze how the painting operates as a symbol of maternal loss and patriarchal theft. Why does McIntire wait until late in the novel to reveal the existence of the trust, and what does the timing achieve structurally?

Why This Prompt Matters This question addresses the craft of revelation and the difference between a plot twist that feels arbitrary and one that recontextualizes earlier material. Students analyze structural choices and symbolic objects simultaneously.

Defensible Thesis Direction The trust revelation arrives at the point when Venesa has already chosen to destroy Trent; it provides legal and moral grounding for a decision she has already made emotionally. The painting thus moves from a symbol of sentimental longing to a piece of evidence, reframing Venesa’s revenge as justice rather than mere vengeance.

Evidence Leads

Chapter 18 (14. Venesa): Venesa tries to bargain with Uncle T for the painting, but he refuses, revealing its importance to her.
Chapter 34 (30. Venesa): Uncle T gives the painting to Aria, calling her the only deserving person, severing Venesa’s last tie.
Chapter 43 (39. Venesa): Bastien reveals the irrevocable trust hidden within the painting and that the empire should belong to Venesa.
Chapter 56 (52. Venesa): Bastien shows Venesa the two hidden wills inside the painting.

10. Patricide and the Mafia Patriarchy

Enzo kills his father Carlos at his brother’s grave after learning Carlos ordered Peppino’s murder. Analyze how the Marino family’s cycle of violence mirrors and intersects with the Kingston family’s betrayals. What does the novel suggest about inheritance, loyalty, and the possibility of breaking cycles of patriarchal violence?

Why This Prompt Matters This prompt engages with theme analysis across the two crime families. Students must synthesize the Marino and Kingston plotlines into a unified argument about the novel’s vision of patriarchy and whether escape is possible.

Defensible Thesis Direction Both family systems operate on the premise that loyalty must be enforced through fear and violence. Carlos’s murder of his own heir and Trent’s murder of his sister-in-law are not aberrations but logical outcomes of an ideology that treats family members as assets. Enzo’s patricide, unlike his father’s violence, is framed as a necessary excision rather than an act of paranoia, suggesting that the cycle breaks not through passivity but through the directed elimination of its perpetrators.

Evidence Leads

Chapter 52 (48. Enzo): Carlos admits he ordered Peppino’s hit because Peppino planned to kill him first, then threatens Venesa.
Chapter 52 (48. Enzo): Enzo disarms his father and fatally shoots him at Peppino’s grave.
Chapter 37 (33. Venesa): Trent admits to arranging Venesa’s mother’s murder.
Chapter 57 (53. Venesa): Trent dies by Venesa’s hand, using the skills he forced her to develop.

11. The Seashell Necklace as a Relationship Arc in Miniature

The coral seashell necklace appears at three key moments: Enzo’s attempt to purchase it, Venesa’s rejection of the gift, and its later appearance as a birthday present that prompts her decision to return and fight. Analyze the necklace as a symbol that tracks the development of their relationship and Venesa’s shifting relationship to receiving love.

Why This Prompt Matters This is a focused symbolic analysis exercise. Students trace a single object through a text and explain how its meaning accumulates and transforms, building an argument about character change through material culture.

Defensible Thesis Direction The necklace arc traces Venesa’s journey from rejecting generosity as a threat to accepting a gift as a promise. Her initial refusal is an act of self-protection rooted in a lifetime of transactional relationships; her later decision to wear it signals that she is ready to be “loved out loud” and to stop defining herself solely through what she can do for others.

Evidence Leads

Chapter 12 (8. Venesa): Enzo tries to buy the seashell necklace; Venesa refuses out of pride and distrust.
Chapter 38 (34. Venesa): Venesa finds the necklace with a note reading “To making memories… Happy birthday,” and resolves to return and fight.
Chapter 55 (51. Enzo): Enzo returns the necklace to Venesa in the Lair basement after Fisher’s death.
Chapter 59 (Epilogue): The necklace is not directly mentioned, but the boardwalk proposal bookends the gift-giving motif.

12. The Ending and the Problem of Closure

The epilogue offers a proposal, a bound and beaten abuser delivered as a gift, and the couple’s union under a full moon. Analyze whether the ending resolves the novel’s tensions or leaves them productively open. Consider the epilogue in relation to the author’s note that the protagonist is a villain. Does the ending permit Venesa and Enzo to be happy without being redeemed?

Why This Prompt Matters This prompt asks students to evaluate closure as a craft problem. It requires considering the relationship between genre expectations (dark romance), reader satisfaction, and the ethical provocations of a villain-protagonist narrative.

Defensible Thesis Direction The ending does not attempt to redeem Venesa and Enzo but to stabilize them within a mutually recognized darkness. The proposal and the delivery of Rusty for vengeance are not softening gestures but affirmations that their love is built on shared understanding, not moral improvement. The epilogue satisfies genre expectations for a romantic resolution while honoring the book’s insistence that some people find love in the wreckage, not despite it.

Evidence Leads

Chapter 3 (Author’s Note): McIntire states the main character is a villain and this is not a safe read.
Chapter 59 (Epilogue): Enzo proposes at the Sea Wheel, then presents Venesa with Rusty and Jessica for revenge.
Chapter 58 (54. Venesa): After Aria’s death, Venesa feels her accumulated animosity bleed away and believes she and Enzo can finally live peacefully.
Chapter 52 (48. Enzo): Enzo resolves to find Venesa, forgive her deception, and spend his life loving her openly.

For more resources on Hexed, explore the full study guide, detailed character analyses, and in-depth theme discussions.