Obsession and Revenge: The Driving Forces in The Divorce

The Thematic Core of Obsession and Revenge

In The Divorce, Freida McFadden crafts a psychological thriller where two apparently ordinary people cross every ethical line because of one all-consuming fix. Naomi Roth becomes obsessed with the woman who stole her husband; Jeremy Roth becomes obsessed with keeping his son, Teddy, by any means. Each character’s fixation births a corresponding revenge plot, and the novel asks whether either can claim the moral high ground when both are willing to destroy others to satisfy their needs.

Naomi’s Descent: From Spurned Wife to Avenger

Naomi’s obsession with Veronica begins the moment she realizes her marriage is ending. She can’t stop thinking about Veronica’s youth, her beauty, and the unfairness of being replaced. The fixation appears first in small acts—driving to the house late at night to spy, creeping around the driveway to identify an unfamiliar car, then peering through windows (chapter 10 evidence). Within weeks, her thoughts turn violent. She imagines using scissors to cut Veronica’s perfect face. “By the time my work is done, Jeremy won’t want anything to do with her,” she thinks, planning to make the outside as ugly as she believes the inside to be (chapter 43).

The revenge escalates from fantasy to action. Naomi drugs Veronica, binds her with duct tape, drags her to the basement, and cuts off her hair in uneven clumps, nicking her skin with the scissors (chapter 41). She believes that destroying Veronica’s beauty will somehow restore her family. Yet even after the haircut, Naomi admits the woman is “still really pretty,” and the setback only pushes her to contemplate worse violence (chapter 42). Her obsession has become a funnel: every thought leads back to Veronica, every action is a step toward eliminating the threat. Naomi never fully acknowledges that her own need for possession—not love—is driving her.

Jeremy’s Calculated Obsession: A Father’s Deadly Devotion

While Naomi’s fixation is hot and impulsive, Jeremy’s is cold and patient. The epilogue reveals that he has known for two years that Teddy is not biologically his son. Rather than lose the child, Jeremy arranged the murder of Teddy’s biological father, Clay Barkley, staging it as a drug overdose (epilogue). That alone proves his willingness to kill for the sake of keeping Teddy. But he doesn’t stop there.

Over the months of the divorce, Jeremy systematically destroys Naomi’s credibility. He gaslights her, plants the disemboweled stuffed elephant with a kitchen knife as evidence of her instability (chapter 27), and slowly poisons her homemade kombucha with acetaminophen (chapter 26). His goal is not just to win custody but to eliminate Naomi entirely. By the house fire at the end, he feels “triumphant,” ready to kill anyone who might try to separate him from Teddy (epilogue). His obsession is quieter, more methodical, and ultimately more successful than Naomi’s—but it is no less destructive.

The Collision: Revelations That Rewrite the Revenge

The two obsessions meet in the cellar scene. Naomi has tied up Veronica and is ready to disfigure or even kill her. But Veronica, through tears, reveals the truth: Teddy is her son. “Not Jeremy,” she sobs. “My son!” (chapter 46). In that moment, the entire revenge plot reorients. Naomi isn’t punishing a homewrecker; she is torturing the birth mother of the child she has raised. The revelation forces the reader to reconsider whose obsession is more monstrous. Jeremy’s murder of Clay and his campaign against Naomi are both driven by his terror of losing Teddy. Veronica, too, has an obsession: she wants financial security and will sleep with wealthy men to get it (chapter 27). She may not love Jeremy, but she loves the life he can provide.

The collision shows that everyone in the novel is fixated on possessing something—Teddy, the marriage, money, status—and each uses revenge as a tool to hold onto it. No character is purely innocent.

Symbols of Fixation

McFadden uses a handful of recurring objects to mirror the theme.

• The stuffed elephant: Teddy’s beloved “Ellie” becomes a weapon of psychological warfare. Jeremy stabs the elephant and stuffs it with red substance, then plants it in Naomi’s apartment to make her look deranged (chapter 27). The violated toy symbolizes how the adults are willing to harm the child’s comfort to win.
• The kitchen knife: Appears both in the elephant scene and in Naomi’s fantasies. It is a concrete tool of domestic violence that keeps reappearing as the threat becomes real.
• Homemade kombucha: Naomi’s health drink is turned into a vector for slow poisoning. It represents how the home itself—supposedly safe—has become infested with betrayal and hidden revenge.
• Veronica’s hair: The long, beautiful hair is the first thing Naomi attacks. Cutting it is a symbolic castration of Veronica’s attractiveness, an attempt to make Jeremy fall out of love. But the hair’s regrowth (implied by her continued appeal) suggests that revenge cannot truly erase the source of the obsession.

Complexity: Who Is the True Villain?

The novel resists a simple answer. Naomi’s revenge is ugly—she kidnaps and terrorizes another woman—but she begins as a victim whose husband has betrayed her and is actively plotting her murder. Jeremy, on the other hand, presents as a devoted father while calmly arranging deaths and framing his wife. The prologue shows a woman surrendering to police “for him,” and the epilogue shows a man celebrating his wife’s death “for Teddy.” Both believe they are acting out of love, but their actions reveal that obsession has replaced love. The reader is left questioning whether any revenge is justified when it is fueled by the same uncontrollable need.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Naomi’s initial obsession with Veronica change throughout the novel?
   Answer: It begins with jealousy and wounded pride, grows into surveillance and violent fantasies, then escalates to physical assault and kidnapping. After learning that Veronica is Teddy’s biological mother, her obsession shifts from punishing a rival to protecting a child—though she has already crossed into criminal territory.

2. Why does Jeremy’s revenge succeed where Naomi’s fails?
   Answer: Jeremy acts with cold calculation, planning for years, using gaslighting and evidence-planting to discredit Naomi legally. He stays emotionally detached, while Naomi acts impulsively and lets her rage drive decisions that make her look guilty.

3. What role does the stuffed elephant play in the revenge plot?
   Answer: Jeremy weaponizes Teddy’s toy to frame Naomi as violent and unstable. The stabbed and “disemboweled” elephant creates a powerful piece of false evidence that helps him convince the mediator and potentially the court that Naomi is dangerous.

4. How does the revelation that Teddy is Veronica’s biological son complicate the theme of revenge?
   Answer: It retroactively reframes Naomi’s revenge: she is torturing a mother who lost her child, not just a mistress. It also makes Jeremy’s earlier murder of Clay (the biological father) more sinister, since he killed a man to keep stolen child. The revenge cycle becomes even more tangled, with no clear victim or villain.

5. Does the novel suggest that obsession can ever be healthy?
   Answer: No. Every obsessed character—Naomi, Jeremy, even Veronica in her pursuit of wealth—ends up harming others and themselves. The prologue shows Naomi surrendering with her life destroyed; the epilogue shows Jeremy triumphant but morally bankrupt. McFadden implies that when love turns into fixation, it always leads to destruction.