The Secret Keeper

Aristotle uses the term hamartia—from the Greek “to err” or “to miss the mark”— in his Poetics to describe an ideal structure of ancient Greek tragedy in which the hero’s own characteristics or choices bring about his downfall. In literary criticism in English, this attribute came to be known as the hero’s tragic or “fatal” flaw—for instance, Shakespeare’s Othello demonstrates the fatal flaw of jealousy; while King Lear’s fatal flaw is misplaced loyalty.

Within The Secret Keeper, the life of Dolly Smitham is a tragedy in the classical sense, in that her ambitions help her briefly rise, but her fatal flaw proves her downfall. In Dolly’s case, her need to be revenged on Vivien Jenkins, whom Dolly believes has slighted her and is responsible for wrecking her dreams, leads Dolly to craft the blackmail letter that leads Vivien to Dolly’s boardinghouse in hopes of saving her life. Had she never written that letter, it would never have been sent, and Dolly quite possibly could have gone on to escape to the seaside with Jimmy and Vivien’s check, leaving Vivien to live out a life of misery with her cruel and obsessive husband. Instead, Dolly’s insatiable desire for more or better than what she has leads her to the explosion that will end Dolly’s life and give Vivien a second chance at happiness.

Allusions are references to an object outside the text that add meaning, nuance, or emotion through the association. The Secret Keeper makes several allusions to other literary works—especially classic children’s literature—that signify the rich imaginative and emotional world that children inhabit. The most important allusion is to J. M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan. Vivien’s chooses this play to perform with the war orphans at the London hospital as a way to provide some reassurance that they can survive without their parents. There are allusions to other classic tales, including Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which point to a sense of magic and the possibility of transformation, two powerful if latent motifs in the novel.