Memory Suppression and Recovery in Near the Bone by Christina Henry
Thematic Claim: Memory as a Fragmented Path to Selfhood in Near the Bone
In Christina Henry’s Near the Bone, memory suppression is not a simple act of forgetting but a survival mechanism that William deliberately cultivates in Mattie. The novel argues that traumatic memories are buried in fragments, and each recovered fragment reshapes the protagonist’s understanding of her captivity and her pre-abduction identity. Recovery is neither linear nor complete; it is a painful, piecemeal excavation that ultimately allows Mattie to reclaim her name and her agency. The theme operates through Mattie’s internal monologue, her physical interactions with objects like the Box and the locked trunk, and her gradual reconnection to a self that William tried to erase.
Fragmented Recollections: The Earliest Cracks in the Suppression
From the opening chapters, Mattie’s memory is shown to be unreliable and porous. She lives in a present dominated by William’s rules, yet small sensory triggers cause the past to leak through. In Chapter Eight, while William is away setting traps, Mattie experiences a sudden, distinct memory of a hot-pink lunchbox containing a cheese sandwich, an apple, and a Twinkie. The memory arrives “so abruptly” that it makes her feel “sick and dizzy,” and she murmurs, “I’d forgotten about Twinkies.” This moment is significant because it is not a coherent narrative but a sensory flash—the taste of yellow cake, the texture of waxed paper—that disrupts her current reality. The outline notes that she “had a sudden, distinct memory of unzipping a hot-pink lunchbox,” and the evidence confirms that she recalls the exact contents and even the ritual of taking small bites to make the dessert last. This memory is a fragment, unconnected to any larger story, but it plants a seed: Mattie begins to realize that her life before William existed, and that she has forgotten “so many things.”
The fragmentary nature of these recollections is crucial. They do not arrive as a complete biography but as isolated images, tastes, and sounds. In Chapter Seven, Mattie has a “brief memory flash of a younger William and a woman in a yellow sweater,” but it “slips away” before she can grasp it. This flash is tantalizing and incomplete, leaving her with more questions than answers. The novel thus establishes that memory suppression is not a clean erasure but a series of buried shards that surface unpredictably. Each shard, however, forces Mattie to confront the gap between her current life and the life she once had, making her increasingly aware that William’s version of her identity is a construction.
The Box and the Locked Trunk: Symbols of Forced Suppression
Two physical objects in the novel function as direct symbols of memory suppression: the Box and the locked trunk. The Box, a coffin-like trapdoor space beneath the cabin floor, is where William imprisoned Mattie whenever she tried to run away or resist. In Chapter Sixteen, Mattie reveals the Box to C.P., explaining, “The Box is for bad girls who try to run away.” She describes how William would lock her inside, and the evidence shows that she “wept then, wept like she never had before” upon seeing it again. The Box is not just a punishment; it is a mechanism of memory suppression. By isolating Mattie in a dark, confined space, William conditions her to suppress her desire to escape and, by extension, to suppress the memories of home that fuel that desire. The outline notes that after being put in the Box, Mattie “forgot about Mom and Heather and about your life before, and it was easier to do what he wanted than be hit all the time.” The Box thus becomes a physical embodiment of the psychological suppression William enforces—it is a space where memory is literally buried, and Mattie’s eventual confrontation with it in Chapter Sixteen marks the beginning of her emotional release.
The locked trunk, in contrast, represents the hidden truth that William keeps from Mattie. In Chapter Seventeen, Mattie uses William’s keys to open the trunk, discovering packets of heroin, stacks of cash, and newspaper clippings about a missing girl and a murder. The clippings include a photograph of an eight-year-old girl—herself—and a headline about her mother’s murder. Mattie’s reaction is telling: she “didn’t understand what she was looking at” at first, and then she recognizes herself in the picture. The trunk is a repository of suppressed facts, not just about William’s criminal activities but about Mattie’s own identity. The evidence shows that Mattie had “forgotten the shape of her eyes and her nose and her mouth” because there were no mirrors in the cabin. The trunk’s contents force her to confront the reality that she is Samantha Hunter, a kidnapping victim, and that her mother was murdered. This discovery is a pivotal moment of memory recovery, but it is also deeply destabilizing. Mattie’s hand shakes, and she must force herself to breathe, saying, “I need to see. I need to know.” The trunk, like the Box, is a symbol of how William controlled information—he kept Mattie ignorant of her own past, just as he kept her physically confined.
Recovery Through Artifacts: The Newspaper Clippings and the Mother’s Photo
The most explicit recovery of memory occurs through the newspaper clippings in the trunk. In Chapter Seventeen, Mattie finds a series of clippings: the first shows a picture of a little girl with light hair and dark eyes, with the headline “TRAGEDY—8-year-old girl missing after mother found brutally murdered.” The second clipping says “MISSING—police seek information.” The third clipping, which makes her breath stop, includes a candid photo of a woman in a checked shirt—her mother. Mattie strokes the picture and says, “I forgot your face.” Yet even as she stares at the photo, she “still couldn’t dredge up a memory of her mom’s face.” This moment captures the complexity of memory recovery: the artifact provides factual information, but it does not automatically restore emotional or sensory memory. Mattie knows intellectually that this woman is her mother, but the lived memory remains elusive. The novel thus suggests that recovery is not a simple retrieval of stored data but a reconstruction that requires emotional and cognitive work.
The clippings also reveal the public dimension of Mattie’s story. C.P. tells her that her case is “really famous,” and that there are annual news stories about “what happened to Samantha Hunter.” This external record contradicts William’s narrative that Mattie was given to him and that she belonged to him. The clippings are a counter-memory, a documented truth that challenges the false identity William imposed. Mattie’s decision to take the clippings and the money, and to tie the keys around her neck, is an act of reclaiming her past. She literally carries the evidence of her identity with her as she flees the mountain.
Identity and Reclamation: From Mattie to Samantha
The theme of memory recovery culminates in Mattie’s reclamation of her name. Throughout the novel, she is called Mattie, a diminutive of Martha, which William chose for her. In Chapter Sixteen, she tells C.P., “I forgot that name for a long time. William told me my name was Martha, and he called me Mattie.” The act of remembering her birth name—Samantha Hunter—is a direct challenge to William’s authority. In Chapter Eighteen, when William ambushes her and insists she is his wife, Mattie denies this, asserting, “My real name is Samantha.” This verbal assertion is the culmination of her memory recovery: she no longer accepts the identity William imposed. The outline confirms that she pushes William off a cliff, killing him, and later gives her name as Samantha to the state troopers.
However, the novel does not present this recovery as a clean transformation. In Chapter Sixteen, after opening the Box, Mattie reflects that “that person didn’t exist anymore, that little mouse Martha. But she wasn’t quite Samantha yet, either. She was something in between.” This in-between state acknowledges that memory recovery is ongoing and incomplete. Mattie has recovered fragments—the lunchbox, the mother’s photo, the name—but she has not yet integrated them into a coherent sense of self. The novel ends with her giving her name to the authorities, but it does not show her fully healed or fully remembering. The final image is of a woman who has taken the first steps toward reclaiming her life, but whose memories remain partial.
Complexity and Contradiction: The Unreliability of Memory and the Burden of Guilt
The theme of memory suppression is complicated by the novel’s insistence that memory is not only unreliable but also entangled with guilt. Mattie repeatedly blames herself for her mother’s death. In Chapter Eleven, she has an internal voice that says, “It’s your fault that your mother is dead,” and she recalls that William knocked on the window in the middle of the night and she opened it. This memory is painful because it suggests that Mattie’s own actions—opening the window—led to her abduction and her mother’s murder. The novel does not let Mattie off the hook easily; she must confront this guilt as part of her recovery. The evidence shows that she thinks, “You used to fight back. You used to try to run. That was why William put you in the Box. And after a while you forgot about Mom and Heather and about your life before.” This passage links memory suppression to self-blame: Mattie forgot her past because remembering it was too painful, and because she believed she was responsible for the tragedy.
The contradiction lies in the fact that recovery does not automatically bring relief. When Mattie sees her mother’s photo, she weeps but also feels a “fierce and burning sickness” when William talks about having sons. The recovered memories are not uniformly liberating; they bring grief, anger, and confusion. Moreover, the novel shows that some memories remain permanently inaccessible. Mattie cannot recall her mother’s face even after seeing the photo, and she never learns what happened to her sister Heather. C.P. has no memory of Heather, and the clippings do not mention her. This gap suggests that memory recovery is always partial, and that some losses are irrecoverable. The theme thus resists a simple narrative of healing; instead, it presents memory as a process of ongoing negotiation with the past.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does the Box function as a symbol of memory suppression, and what does Mattie’s reaction to it in Chapter Sixteen reveal about her psychological state?
The Box is a physical space where William confines Mattie to punish her for attempting to escape. It symbolizes the forced suppression of her memories of home and her desire for freedom. When Mattie opens the Box in Chapter Sixteen, she weeps uncontrollably, saying she “just wanted to go home to Mom and Heather.” Her reaction shows that the Box is not just a punishment but a trigger for the buried grief and fear that William tried to erase. The act of confronting the Box allows Mattie to begin releasing the emotions she had suppressed for years.
2. In what ways do the newspaper clippings in the locked trunk serve as a counter-memory to William’s narrative?
The clippings provide factual evidence of Mattie’s identity as Samantha Hunter, a kidnapping victim, and of her mother’s murder. They contradict William’s claim that Mattie was given to him and that she belonged to him. The clippings also connect Mattie to a public story—her case is famous—which validates her experience and challenges the isolation William imposed. By taking the clippings, Mattie reclaims a documented version of her past that William had hidden.
3. How does the novel portray the unreliability of memory through Mattie’s sensory recollections, such as the lunchbox memory?
The lunchbox memory arrives as a sudden sensory flash—the taste of a Twinkie, the sight of a hot-pink lunchbox—rather than as a coherent narrative. This fragmentary quality shows that memory is not a linear record but a collection of isolated impressions. Mattie’s inability to connect the lunchbox to a larger story highlights how trauma disrupts the continuity of memory. The novel suggests that recovery involves piecing together these fragments, but that the process is incomplete and often disorienting.
4. Why does Mattie’s assertion of her name “Samantha” in Chapter Eighteen represent a culmination of her memory recovery?
The name “Samantha” is the identity William tried to erase, replacing it with “Martha” and “Mattie.” By asserting her real name, Mattie rejects William’s authority and reclaims her pre-abduction self. This act is the final step in a series of recovered memories—the lunchbox, the mother’s photo, the clippings—that collectively restore her sense of who she is. However, the novel also shows that she is “something in between,” indicating that the recovery is not yet complete.
5. How does the theme of memory suppression complicate the idea of healing in the novel?
The novel resists a simple narrative of healing because memory recovery is partial and painful. Mattie recovers fragments but cannot recall her mother’s face or learn what happened to Heather. She also struggles with guilt, blaming herself for opening the window to William. The recovered memories bring grief and anger, not just relief. The theme suggests that healing is an ongoing process of confronting the past, but that some wounds may never fully close. Mattie’s final act of giving her name to the troopers is a beginning, not an end.