Spiders Symbol Analysis

In the words of Jacquie and Opal’s mother, Vicky, spiders represent things that are both homes and traps—addiction, memory, and ignorance are just a few of the things the novel’s characters encounter which threaten to ensnare them (and beckon to house them) much like a spider’s web. From Jacquie’s spiderweb tattoos to Orvil’s and Opal’s respective encounters with spider-leg-infested sores on their bodies, spider-related imagery is rife throughout the novel and the lives of the characters inside it.

At one point in the novel, Jacquie Red Feather is eleven days sober and struggling to remain so while attending a painful professional conference on the abuse, addiction, violence, and suicide in Native communities around the country. Right when she considers drinking the bottles in her hotel room’s mini-fridge, she looks down and contemplates the spiderweb tattoos on her feet. She is reminded of her mother’s speech about homes and traps, and successfully avoids drinking. She no longer wants to live in the house alcohol built for her, and is too wise to fall into its traps again.

Jacquie’s grandson Orvil Red Feather is the second major character in the novel to encounter spider imagery. Banned by his great-aunt and caregiver Opal from learning about or participating in Native traditions, the fourteen-year-old Orvil has turned to the internet to learn about the history of his people and to study Native dance in preparation for the Big Oakland Powwow. As the powwow approaches, Orvil becomes bothered by an itchy sensation in the lump on his leg that he’s had for as long as he can remember. When he picks at the lump, he pulls several spider legs out of it. The spider legs symbolize his emergence into adulthood, and his emerging sensitivity to the mysteries, coincidences, and stories all around him—he is beginning to make a home in the Native community, a place Opal warned him could only ever be a trap.

In a flashback, Opal reveals that she, too, found spider legs in her own leg as a girl shortly after helping Jacquie to escape the home of their “uncle” Ronald, a family friend who eyed the girls lustfully despite being entrusted to care for them after their mother’s death. For Opal, too, the spider legs symbolized an emergence into adulthood, and her escape from a home that was also a trap.