Trauma and Survival in The Boyfriend: Breaking Cycles or Perpetuating Violence?
Thematic Claim
In The Boyfriend, Freida McFadden presents trauma not as a singular wound but as a legacy that characters either pass on through violence or struggle to contain. Tom Brewer, Sydney Shaw, and Gretchen (Daisy) Driscoll each respond to past abuse and murder by either perpetuating cycles of harm or making fragile attempts to break free. The novel argues that survival after trauma is rarely a clean escape—it often demands moral compromise, repetition of violence, or a willful blindness that mimics complicity.
Tom Brewer: From Victim to Vigilante
Tom’s childhood is defined by his father’s physical and emotional abuse. In a flashback chapter, he recalls intervening when his father attacks his mother. Armed with a fire poker, Tom hesitates—and his father disarms him, stabbing him in the stomach and forcing him to back down. That moment teaches Tom that hesitation costs him control. Later, when his father threatens to rape Daisy, Tom stabs him in the gut with a steak knife and, after a slow crawl of blood, cuts his throat. The murder is presented as both a protective act and the culmination of years of suppressed rage.
Tom’s trauma surfaces in violent dreams about Daisy—imagining her mutilated, himself strangling her. He wakes relieved he hasn’t hurt her, yet the fantasies reveal that his survival mechanism (destroying his father) has wired him to see violence as a solution. He even tells Daisy, “Nobody else dies” unless they “deserve it,” a loophole that rationalizes his later murder of Kevin. Tom’s survival is not a healing; it is a transformation of victimhood into a righteous killer persona.
Sydney Shaw: Bleeding as Vulnerability and Survival
Sydney’s trauma is less overt but equally defining. Her von Willebrand disease—a bleeding disorder—becomes a symbol of her physical and emotional vulnerability. After the date with Kevin, where he pins her against a wall and threatens assault, she arrives home with blood streaming from a head wound. The blood marks her as a survivor, but also as someone who cannot stop bleeding when wounded.
She is rescued by Tom, but later learns he is a murderer. In the epilogue, Sydney receives a lock of Kevin’s hair and a note from Tom claiming he “won’t be bothering you ever again.” Rather than report Tom to her ex-boyfriend Jake Sousa, she throws the envelope in the trash and goes upstairs to get ready for dinner. This act of concealment is her own survival mechanism: she chooses ignorance and a new relationship with Jake over justice. Sydney’s trauma (the date, the stalking) leads her to tacitly endorse lethal violence, perpetuating the cycle she hoped to escape.
Gretchen (Daisy) Driscoll: The Cycle Unbroken
Gretchen is Tom’s high school sweetheart who he thought died. In fact, she is alive, living under a fake identity, and has become a serial killer. Her own trauma—abandonment? abuse?—is not fully detailed, but her actions show a complete internalization of violence. She kills her fiancé Randy Muncy and later plans to kill Sydney as a witness. Tom’s condition to go with her is that the killing stops, but she only agrees when he allows exceptions for those who “deserve it.”
Gretchen’s survival is built on a foundation of murder and manipulation. She uses a scrunchie as a signature accessory—a symbol of her girlish innocence, now weaponized. She cannot break the cycle; she can only try to pull Tom deeper into it. Her fate is uncertain (she and Tom vanish), but the epilogue suggests Tom is still killing on her behalf, indicating that trauma has fused them into a violent unit.
Symbolic Connections
- Blood and Nosebleeds : Sydney’s bleeding condition literalizes the way trauma makes one vulnerable and exposed. Blood also appears when Tom is stabbed by his father and when he kills Kevin. It marks both victim and perpetrator.
- Scrunchie : Daisy’s scrunchie is a piece of childhood innocence, but in adulthood it becomes a disguise for a killer. It represents the way survivors of trauma may cling to harmless symbols while hiding lethal impulses.
- Burner Phone : Tom and Gretchen use burners to avoid detection. The phone symbolizes the anonymity and separation from a normal life that trauma survivors must adopt to stay hidden.
- Ant Farm (appears in The Teacher excerpt): The teacher digging a grave alone reflects the isolating labor of covering up trauma. The ants—small, persistent—echo the way past horrors cannot be buried forever.
Complexity and Contradiction
McFadden complicates the theme by showing that survival often requires moral corrosion. Tom wants to stop killing but kills again for Daisy. Sydney wants safety but hides evidence of murder. Gretchen wants Tom’s love but can only express it through shared violence. The epilogue leaves Tom unpunished and Sydney complicit, suggesting that surviving trauma in this world means accepting bloodstained compromises.
The contradiction is sharpest in Tom’s character: he is both the abused child who protected his mother and the cold executioner. The novel refuses to condemn him entirely, instead forcing the reader to confront the uncomfortable truth that survival sometimes looks like becoming the monster one fought.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does Tom’s childhood abuse shape his later willingness to kill?
Tom’s father taught him that violence is the only way to protect loved ones. After hesitating once and being injured, Tom learns never to hesitate again. Killing his father becomes a template: when Daisy is threatened, he kills; when Sydney is stalked, he kills Kevin. His trauma rewrites his moral code so that lethal force feels like a natural survival instinct.
2. Why does Sydney choose to throw away the evidence of Kevin’s murder?
Sydney is traumatized by Kevin’s assault and stalking. She knows Tom killed him, but she also knows Tom saved her. To report him would risk losing the security Jake provides and would force her to relive the trauma in court. Her choice to cover up the murder is a survival strategy—she prioritizes moving on over justice, revealing how trauma can bend ethics.
3. In what way does Gretchen represent an unbroken cycle of trauma?
Gretchen has been killing since at least high school (she left Tom believing she was dead). She cannot imagine a life without violence. When Tom asks her to stop, she agrees only if she can still kill “deserving” people. Her inability to break the cycle shows that trauma can become an identity, not just a wound.
4. What role does the scrunchie play in Gretchen’s character?
The scrunchie is a visual link to her past as Daisy, the innocent girl Tom fell in love with. By keeping it, Gretchen tries to preserve a version of herself that is pure and lovable, even as she commits murder. The accessory becomes a mask—surviving trauma by clinging to a false, gentle identity while acting ruthlessly.
5. How does the epilogue challenge the idea that survivors can “move on” without consequences?
Sydney literally throws away the evidence and “moves on” to dinner with Jake. But the lock of Kevin’s hair and Tom’s note remain in the reader’s mind. The act of disposal does not erase the moral stain. McFadden suggests that true survival after trauma requires confronting the violence one has benefited from, not hiding it.