How to Sell a Haunted House

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Parts 4-5

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Velveteen Rabbit

The Velveteen Rabbit is a classic children’s book. In it, a young boy is given a velveteen rabbit as a gift. Another toy tells the rabbit that if a child loves him enough, he will become real. When the boy becomes ill, the doctor orders that all of his toys be destroyed. The rabbit cries over his abandonment, and when his tear falls, the Nursery Magic Fairy appears and tells him that she can make him real. She takes him into the forest, where he changes into a real rabbit. The following spring, the boy sees the rabbit in the forest.

The Velveteen Rabbit appears as a motif very early on: Chapter 2 opens with an argument about it between Louise and Poppy. While Poppy loves the book, Louise hates it; it was a gift for Poppy from Nancy, who thinks that it is Louise’s favorite book. In fact, Louise was always terrified by it, and Nancy’s assertion that it was her favorite illustrates their difficulty connecting and their differences as parents, contributing to the theme of The Challenges of Mother-Daughter Relationships.

Hendrix uses The Velveteen Rabbit to parallel Louise’s own childhood experience with a toy that comes to life: Pupkin. Mark connects their struggles with Pupkin directly to the book: “For years Mom invested Pupkin with attention and focus and time, and like in The Velveteen Rabbit, love brings things to life. She put all her emotional energy into Pupkin, and some of it bled into the others” (212). At the end of the novel, Louise finally reveals why she “always hated [The Velveteen Rabbit]. Being loved didn’t mean you were alive […] Being alive meant something else” (397). Louise is able to use her understanding of this book to convince Freddie that because he was alive, he must die and move on from the world. In a larger sense, this applies to her parents’ death, helping her to let go of them and move on as well.

Stollen

Although their family had plenty of difficulties, there was a lot of love in the Joyner family too. Early on, Louise brings up the stollen bread, which, to her, symbolizes the love and comfort of family and home: “Every year after Thanksgiving, her dad took over the kitchen and baked stollen bread for everyone at work” (140). Fittingly for a symbol of family and home, the loaves aren’t perfect: “The loaves were tiny and misshapen, they never rose correctly, and they looked lumpy and malformed, but to Louise, they had always been magical” (140). Louise has always felt safety and comfort with her father, and the stollen offers these same feelings for her.

After the house has been cleansed and Freddie has been put to rest, Louise, Mark, and Poppy are spending some quiet time in the house, when suddenly, Louise catches the scent of stollen: “She felt herself wrapped in the scent of warm butter and hot icing, and she inhaled and let it fill her head. She smelled candied fruit and warm sugar. She smelled yeast” (412). She comments to Mark, “‘You know,’ Louise said, ‘whenever I used to smell Dad’s baking I always felt like everything was going to be okay’” (412). With this symbol, Hendrix offers a rare sweet memory of the family. The scent of the stollen, which comes when they are saying goodbye to the house, allows them to leave the house on a good note, remembering the good of their family and their parents—it provides positive closure that allows them to move forward.

Tickytoo Woods

Tickytoo Woods is Pupkin’s imaginary home, similar to Winnie the Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood. It is the central setting of the stories that Nancy invents for Mark and Louise, using Pupkin and her other puppets. This motif represents a side of Nancy that both of her children loved and a time in their lives when they were both enraptured with her art. The woods also represent family trauma that Louise and Mark need to address to find peace.

However, Tickytoo Woods also serves a much more practical purpose for Louise and Mark. During his time with the radical puppet collective, when he is wearing the Pupkin mask, Mark goes to Tickytoo Woods: “I’d put on Pupkin’s face and wake up underneath the Tick Tock Tree in Tickytoo Woods […] I spent endless summer days in the Bone Orchard, or visiting Away We Go Beach to see the sleepy pirate chickens sail by in their ship” (240). Although this part of Mark’s history is devastating to him, in the end, it provides the clues that they need to find Freddie’s body and return him to his family.

Mark is able to use his knowledge of Tickytoo Woods to help Louise find the burial site of Freddie. He remembers his visits, pinpointing specific locations within the Woods: “The Tick Tock Tree is a cypress. The Bone Orchard is bamboo. It’s where Pupkin always sits at the start of his stories. It’s where he does his best thinking” (384). He connects these locations to the cypress tree in their backyard, and Louise finds Freddie’s bones beneath the tree. When Louise finds Freddie’s body and puts Pupkin on her hand, she actually goes to Tickytoo Woods and convinces Freddie to go home.