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Chapter 26
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in There’s Someone Inside Your House, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma, Loss, and Grief
Guilt, Shame, and Redemption
Alienation
Gossip vs. Communication
Inner Change
Summary
Analysis
Ollie’s police cruiser shines a bright spotlight on David and Rosemarie. Makani jumps out of the car as David aims his knife at Rosemarie’s throat. Alex screams, distracting David, while Makani jumps on him. They struggle, but David frees himself and recognizes Makani. Realizing he’s outnumbered, he flees. Rosemarie is okay, but her leg is injured. The group hears Darby’s anguished moan coming from the edge of the corn maze. There, they find him hyperventilating over Alex’s limp body. Alex’s vertebrae are exposed: David slashed her neck so deeply that he nearly decapitated her. Ollie sprints into the maze after David. Meanwhile, Makani orders someone to call the police. Rosemarie tries but can’t get a signal. Makani doesn’t want Ollie to face David on his own; there are too many people in the maze whose safeties are at risk. Makani and her friends sprint into the maze. Rosemarie stays with Alex.
One comically senseless trope of horror movies is that the central cast of characters inevitably splits up at some point in the movie, all but ensuring that the killer finds and kills off each of them one by one. Perkins subverts this trope in her book, allowing her characters to embrace safety in numbers. In this way, the novel shows that a strong sense of community is vital to a person’s emotional and physical welfare—it’s what will (hopefully) allow them to survive David Ware’s murderous rampage.
Themes
Makani and her friends encounter some maze goers. For a startled moment, she thinks she sees David. Then she realizes it’s only a college student wearing a David costume. Makani urges everyone to leave the maze for their own safety, but nobody takes her seriously. Meanwhile, she’s completely lost track of Ollie. Darby looks at the ground and sees David and Ollie’s muddy footprints. The group sets off down the path.
The college student’s tasteless costume is yet another instance of a person who’s unable to confront violence and trauma. Unable to comprehend the horrific reality of murder and suffering, they turn to humor or avoidance, making light of a serious situation to reassert control over a situation that makes them feel unsafe, threatened, and decidedly out of control. It’s cringeworthy that a person would make light of the murder of innocent kids, but it does say something about the complexity of grief and trauma, and how ill-equipped people sometimes are to confront these complex issues.
Themes
Just when it seems that Makani and Darby have lost track of David and Ollie, Makani finds them in the middle of a scuffle on the muddy ground. David is on top of Ollie, but Ollie has pinned David’s dominant hand to the ground. They struggle, and Ollie manages to escape. Makani runs forward and stands between David and Ollie. David tackles her to the ground and raises the knife above his head. Just as he’s about to plunge the knife into Makani’s heart, Makani feels a wave of blood crash into her face. She licks her lips—corn syrup. She looks behind her and sees Brooke holding an empty bucket.
This scene offers another brief moment of comic relief, as Makani finds herself dripping not with real blood, but with corn syrup. It also imposes a nice symmetry on the story, since the opening scene in Chapter One featured Brooke complaining to Haley about the fake blood involved in the school’s production of Sweeney Todd. Finally, when Brooke swoops in to distract David from stabbing Makani, it’s another instance of people banding together for survival. Once more, the novel shows how important having a strong, supportive community is good for one’s inner—and physical—welfare.
Themes
Ollie appears behind Makani and hugs her close. Darby steps between David and Makani and Ollie, while David looks at Darby in disgust. He tells Darby that he’d almost picked him as a victim, but he changed his mind once he realized that Darby’s connections to Osborne are too strong for him to leave the town. It was then that David decided to target Makani. Darby is confused. “You don’t want us to leave?” he asks. David doesn’t respond. He charges Darby, knocks him to the ground, and stabs him in the chest. Then he goes for Ollie. David stabs Ollie in the chest, too, and Ollie falls to the ground.
David’s comment about opting not to kill Darby because he thought Darby wouldn’t leave town is confusing, but it does shed more light on why David is killing his classmates. It’s not just that he’s targeting ambitious students—he’s targeting ambitious students who have plans or dreams of leaving town.
Themes
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Makani screams. A group of tweens emerge from around the corner, but Brooke herds them back the way they came before David can get to them. David sets his hateful eyes on Makani and walks toward her until they’re standing face to face. She looks toward Darby and Ollie, whose bodies have stopped twitching. Makani knows they’re dead and starts to cry. What has David done, and why? David’s angry. He tells Makani it wasn’t supposed to happen this way—she was supposed to die two days ago, and his spree was supposed to last another week. Nevertheless, everything has worked out anyway, David explains. “You’ll be here forever,” David says. “And I get to leave.” Makani still doesn’t understand. David stands before Makani and raises his knife about his head.
This scene reveals that, apparently, David has put considerable effort into planning his spree—it even has a designated end date, though thankfully Makani and her friends have prevented it from lasting that long. Despite all his planning, though, David’s plan makes little sense. It’s totally unclear what he thinks he'll accomplish by killing. The senselessness of David’s plan shows how significantly his inner demons warp his sense of reality. They’ve driven him to believe that violence is the only way to solve his problems—that he can evade his personal issues by lashing out at others. The knife symbolizes David’s inability to be introspective.
Themes
