The Moral Complexity of Revenge and the Search for Accountability in That Summer

The Thematic Claim: When Revenge Cannot Deliver Justice in That Summer (2021) by Jennifer Weiner — Theme Analysis of Revenge and Accountability in the Novel, Characters, Symbols, and Study Questions | That Summer Study Companion — The moral complexity of revenge and the search for accountability in Jennifer Weiner's That Summer (2021) — a theme analysis of Diana, Daisy, Hal, and the search for justice on Cape Cod. — The epigraphs that open That Summer frame its central question. Mary Oliver's 'Wild Geese' insists that the speaker does not have to be good and need only let the body love what it loves, while Gwen Stefani's 'Just a Girl' laments that the speaker is just a girl and that is all she is allowed to be. Together, these epigraphs pose the novel's central tension: what happens when a girl is told she is not allowed to be anything, and then is harmed by someone who believes he is allowed to be everything? The novel's answer is deliberately unresolved. Diana Scalzi Carmody spends decades searching for accountability after she is raped at fifteen by Hal Shoemaker, a wealthy Emlen Academy graduate, while working as a summer mother's helper on Cape Cod. Across three distinct movements—her confrontation with Brad Burlingham in Baltimore, her calculated manipulation of Daisy Shoemaker, and the final confrontation at the Cape Cod cottage—the narrative suggests that personal vengeance cannot deliver justice. True accountability, the novel implies, requires confronting not only the perpetrator but also the systems of privilege, silence, and complicity that protected him for decades. ## Diana's First Reckoning: Brad and the Cost of Confrontation Diana's first attempt at personal accountability comes when she tracks down Brad Burlingham, the boy who held her wrists while Hal assaulted her. The confrontation is unsettling precisely because Brad is not the monster Diana expected. He is a middle-aged man in a modest Baltimore apartment, fresh from rehab, working at Starbucks, with children whose faces Diana cannot forget. When Diana asks why he let Hal rape her, Brad's answer is almost pathetic: he wanted the in-crowd to like him. He admits the act was terrible, but his confession is hollow—it changes nothing, repairs nothing. The aftermath of this confrontation is where the novel's moral complexity deepens. Brad dies shortly afterward, and Diana is left uncertain whether her visit pushed a troubled man over the edge or whether he was already falling. The evidence is explicit about her torment: Brad's children will grow up without a father, and Diana believes that is her fault. Her revenge—if it can even be called that—has produced not justice but guilt, not closure but sleepless nights. The novel refuses to tell us whether Brad's death was suicide, a relapse, or coincidence, and that ambiguity is the point. Personal vengeance cannot deliver clean outcomes because the people we punish are never just their worst acts. ## The Reckoning Era and the Decision to Go Sideways The second movement of the theme arrives with the #MeToo era. Diana watches the news cycle expose powerful men—producers, newscasters, editors, politicians—and she watches the Brett Kavanaugh hearings with particular intensity. The evidence shows her fury at the judge's denial, his bluster, his insistence that he was the real victim. The woman who testified went into hiding; the judge became a Supreme Court justice. This is the systemic failure that the novel wants us to see: even when a woman does everything right—testifies, tells her story in a calm, clear voice—the system can still swallow her testimony whole. Diana's response is to abandon the direct approach entirely. She decides to approach the problem sideways and come at the women. She creates a fake email address, a fake website, a fake Facebook page, and researches consulting jargon so she can convincingly pose as a business consultant named Diana. Her target is Daisy Shoemaker, the wife of her rapist and the sister of the boy who watched. This is a deeply uncomfortable turn in the narrative: the survivor becomes a manipulator, deceiving an innocent woman to get at the man who harmed her. Diana tells herself she is being careful, that she wants to minimize suffering, but the deception is still a form of collateral damage. The novel refuses to let us cheer for her. ## The Confrontation at the Cottage: Daisy's Choice The third movement is the confrontation at the Cape Cod cottage, where Diana has lured Daisy. Daisy learns the full truth: Hal raped Diana when she was fifteen, Danny Rosen witnessed it and stayed silent, and Hal has spent his life hiding behind a mask of respectability. Daisy's response is not to seek revenge but to demand accountability. She tells Hal she wants a divorce, tells him to stay away from Beatrice, and refuses to let him control the narrative. The most striking moment comes when Hal reaches for Daisy and she imagines letting him fall from the deck. She could end it all without doing anything—just duck. But she doesn't. 'Death would be too easy,' she thinks. 'Death would let him off the hook.' Instead, she chooses to let him live with the knowledge that she knows what he did. This is the novel's most direct statement about revenge: killing Hal would be a mercy compared to forcing him to live with exposure. But even this is not a clean victory. The coda shows Hal visiting every other weekend, bringing gifts, renting a cottage in North Truro. He has not been punished by the legal system. He has not confessed. He has simply been inconvenienced. ## Character and Symbol Connections The theme of revenge and accountability runs through nearly every major character. Diana is the survivor who cycles through approaches—confrontation, manipulation, exposure—without ever finding a version that feels like justice. Daisy is the innocent who becomes an agent of accountability, choosing divorce and truth-telling over violence. Hal is the perpetrator who refuses to see himself as one; at his tenth reunion, when Danny tells him he thinks Hal raped the girl, Hal's response is denial, followed by a question about what he is supposed to do about it now. He remembers Diana's name but deliberately withholds it from Danny. Brad is the bystander whose guilt destroys him. Danny is the witness whose silence enabled the harm and who spends his life in atonement. And Beatrice, the next generation—a girl almost exactly the age Diana was that summer—has already taken direct action, spray-painting 'RAPIST' on a classmate's door, suggesting that the cycle of revenge may continue even as the older characters search for something better. The symbols reinforce this theme. The Cape Cod cottage is both the site of Diana's assault and the site of the final confrontation, a place where the past refuses to stay buried. The beach and sea, where Diana first met Poe and where Beatrice later paddleboards, connect the generations. The shell crafts that Diana teaches Beatrice in the coda suggest a fragile, handmade attempt at repair—something built slowly, piece by piece, in contrast to the violent immediacy of revenge. ## Complexity and Contradiction The novel's treatment of revenge is deliberately contradictory. Diana's confrontation with Brad produces guilt, not relief. Her manipulation of Daisy produces a friendship that feels genuine even though it began in deception. Daisy's decision to let Hal live is framed as a moral choice, but the coda shows that Hal has not really been held accountable—he still visits, still brings gifts, still occupies space in their lives. The novel suggests that personal vengeance cannot deliver justice, but it also suggests that the legal system cannot either. The Kavanaugh hearings are the novel's clearest example: a woman tells the truth, and the man is confirmed anyway. What remains is not justice but a kind of uneasy, ongoing reckoning—a process that never quite ends. ## Study Questions and Answers 1. Why does Diana decide to approach Daisy 'sideways' rather than confronting Hal directly? Diana's direct confrontation with Brad Burlingham ended in his death and her guilt. She also watched the Kavanaugh hearings, where a woman's direct testimony was dismissed and the accused was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Diana concludes that confronting men directly is ineffective and dangerous, so she decides to approach the problem through the women connected to Hal—specifically his wife, Daisy—hoping to minimize suffering while still forcing accountability. 2. What does Daisy's decision not to let Hal fall from the deck reveal about the novel's view of revenge? Daisy imagines letting Hal fall and decides that death would be too easy. She chooses to let him live with the knowledge that she knows what he did, believing that exposure and shame are worse punishments than death. This suggests the novel views revenge as both tempting and ultimately unsatisfying—it would end Hal's suffering rather than prolonging his accountability. 3. How does the novel use the Kavanaugh hearings to critique systemic accountability? Diana watches the hearings and sees a woman testify in a calm, clear voice while the accused denies everything, bullies the senators who question him, and is ultimately confirmed. The woman goes into hiding. This sequence demonstrates that even when survivors do everything right—come forward, testify, tell the truth—the legal and political systems can still fail them, which is why Diana seeks alternative paths to accountability. 4. What role does Brad Burlingham play in the novel's exploration of revenge? Brad is the bystander who held Diana's wrists during the assault. When Diana confronts him, she finds a damaged, struggling man rather than a monster. His admission that he wanted the in-crowd to like him complicates the picture of pure villainy. His subsequent death leaves Diana uncertain whether she caused it, and the novel refuses to resolve this ambiguity, suggesting that revenge has unpredictable and potentially devastating consequences. 5. Does the novel ultimately believe accountability is possible? The novel is ambivalent. Hal is never legally punished, never confesses, and continues to visit his family in the coda. But he has lost his wife's trust, his daughter's respect, and his control over the narrative. Diana has found a kind of peace, cooking at her restaurant and teaching Beatrice crafts. The novel suggests that accountability may not look like punishment or confession, but rather like the slow, imperfect work of living with the truth.