What Have You Done (Adler and Dwyer, #0.5)

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses murder, sexual harassment, sexual assault, child abuse, and trauma.

Vultures are a motif throughout the text, presented from the first few pages. Roy first finds Diana’s body as he sees vultures circling her body—noting how “they’re carrion feeders, they stick their faces in dead and rotting flesh. That’s their job—cleanup crew. Not all of nature is beautiful, Roy knows that well enough” (4). The vivid imagery of the vultures circling Diana, then feeding on her body, serves to parallel the horror of her death and disgust over her murder, the central mystery of the novel.

Then, when Roy revisits the field, he notes all the reporters surrounding the police and the scene, which he calls “vultures of another kind” (39). This metaphor, comparing the reporters to vultures, compares the way both “feed” off of Diana’s death, the reporters doing so to garner attention and views for their media. In the last few pages of the text, vultures appear again, as Diana thinks of how she “woke up in that field, looking down at [her] naked body, assaulted once again by those ugly birds. How many ways […] can a girl be assaulted” (295). The diction is important in Diana’s description, as she uses the word “assaulted,” a double entendre for both the assault of the birds feeding on her body and the assault she suffers at the hands of Brad and Evan, sexual and physical.

Vultures serve as a metaphor for assault, which contributes to the theme of The Complexities of Sexual Assault Allegations. While the bulk of the novel complicates the issue of sexual assault—exploring the fear of not being believed, the embarrassment of revealing the truth to loved ones, and the power dynamics involved—this metaphor simplifies the issue. For the survivor, there should be no complications; sexual predators are “vultures” who unapologetically “feed” on their victims and ruin their lives.

Ghosts are a motif recurring throughout the novel. Diana’s point of view, recounting the story after her death, is that of a ghost. This allows her to comment on the interviews and investigation of the police while showing The Impact of Tragedy on Communities. She feels her rage at her death, causing her unrest in death, but she also sees the grief her death has brought to her mother and Riley. Additionally, Riley becomes fixated on the idea of ghosts as she recalls a Ouija board that she used with Diana and her friend. She attempts to convince first Evan and then her friend to contact Diana, but both refuse, recognizing that it is healthier for them to accept Diana’s death and grieve appropriately.

In both instances, Diana’s ghost symbolizes an inability to move on. Her lingering presence affects her mother, who seeks her out for comfort, and Riley, who seeks her out for closure. While this is physically possible in the world of the novel, it also reveals the dangers of holding onto the past. It is only when Diana finds peace at the end of the novel—admitting that she no longer needs to make her murderer suffer—that the people left behind after her death can also grieve and, hopefully, move on.