Deep And Dark And Dangerous Literary Analysis

“Sometimes nothing is the scariest thing of all,” (Hahn, 152). Nothingness plays a significant role in the lives of Ali and her cousin Emma, while they are staying at Gull Cottage in Maine, a place where their mothers visited every summer when they were children. While in Maine, Ali and Emma meet an impudent individual who goes by the name of Sissy, who is determined to make the girls’ stay not one to forget. In Deep And Dark And Dangerous, the novel written by Mary Downing Hahn, the girls discover Sissy’s true past and unravel her secrets, while also uncovering the fact that Sissy is the spirit of Teresa, the young girl who drowned in the lake the year that Dulcie and Claire (Ali and Emma’s mothers), stopped visiting the lake. During Sissy’s stay, the …show more content…
The novel revolves around Sissy, in which the plot follows the girls and the influence that Sissy has upon them. Major components of the novel include Sissy’s purpose, which also displays the theme that revenge isn’t worth the cost, how the setting influences the mood through symbolism, and the foreshadowing involved to hint what happened in the past. To begin with, one of the major themes of the novel is that revenge isn’t worth the overall cost, which can be supported by Sissy’s purposes. First, “I’m watching you. Tell the truth or else,” (Hahn, 80). This shows that Sissy is haunting the girls because she only wants the truth revealed. She shows this when she paints on one of Dulcie’s canvases after she vandalized her art studio. In the end, when Dulcie announces that Teresa’s death was an accident, when Teresa dove into the water after a doll that Dulcie threw, there was no effect. Nothing was charged onto Dulcie or Claire, and Sissy didn’t react after the truth was revealed, because it didn’t