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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Whole Town’s Sleeping, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Private Space vs. Public Space
The Natural World
Reason vs. Recklessness
Gender and Sexuality
Summary
Analysis
Lavinia enjoys a glass of lemonade on her porch on a hot summer evening. She interacts with some neighborhood boys, and then her friend, Francine, arrives so they can walk to the movies together. As they begin their walk to the town center, which lies on the other side of the ravine, two neighborhood women ask where they are going. The women are shocked to learn that Lavinia and Francine would venture out in public when there is a serial killer, nicknamed the Lonely One, still on the loose. Lavinia dismisses their concerns, and the two neighborhood women go inside, slamming and locking their door behind them.
The unnamed Midwestern town where the protagonist Lavinia lives is close-knit and safe. Neighbors know and communicate with one another in a friendly manner. However, tension immediately arises when both Lavinia’s friend Francine and two neighborhood women mention the serial killer plaguing the community. The women locking themselves indoors creates a distinction between private space and public space that associates public settings with danger and private ones with security and safety. Lavinia ignoring this distinction—and warnings about the serial killer—characterizes her as brave but also potentially reckless. The emphasis on the glass of lemonade is significant; when Lavinia returns later that night, having endured a life-changing experience, it will remind her of everything that has transpired since she last touched it.
Active
Themes
As Lavinia and Francine continue their walk, they discuss rumors about the Lonely One. All of the victims have been women, and all have been found strangled, with their tongues hanging out. When they arrive at the ravine they must cross, Francine, fearing danger, proposes skipping the movie. But Lavinia dismisses her, just as she has the neighborhood women. Francine warns Lavinia that she’ll have to walk back home through the ravine alone after the movie, but Lavinia dismisses this as well. Francine finally complies, and they descend into the ravine, which is dark and mysterious.
The two friends’ attitudes toward the ravine reveal their broader outlooks and personalities. Francine, wary of the Lonely One, is more cautious, suggesting they skip their night out, but Lavinia is bold, fearless, and bent on having fun. She is a woman who defies gender expectations regarding decorum and passivity. The ravine, which gets personified as seductive and mysterious, represents a darker side to the natural world. It also serves as a symbol for the threshold between life and death. Lavinia’s willingness to descend into it here—and walk back through it later, alone—indicates both her appetite for sensual experiences and her fearlessness about death.
Active
Themes
As Lavinia and Francine round a curve of a path in the ravine, they find the dead body of Elizabeth Ramsell, the Lonely One’s latest victim. As with the other victims, Elizabeth’s tongue is hanging out. Francine screams, but Lavinia stays calm, saying they should get the police. The police arrive and send Lavinia and Francine on their way. Francine is in shock, distraught and unnaturally cold, but Lavinia says they should still pick up their friend Helen and go to the movies. They need normalcy, Lavinia insists. As they make their way up the other side of the ravine, they see a neighborhood boy, Douglas Spaulding, watching the investigation. Francine yells at him to go home.
Active
Themes
Lavinia and Francine arrive at Helen’s house and tell her about Elizabeth Ramsell’s death. Helen, like Francine, grows strangely cold, even though it is a warm summer evening. As the three friends head toward the town center, they walk by many “suddenly locked houses.” The atmosphere is eerie, as children who have been ordered indoors leave behind their playthings and even melting popsicles. Helen expresses her concern over being out, but Lavinia assures her that the Lonely One won’t strike again so soon. A figure hiding behind a tree jumps out at them, and all three women scream, but it turns out to be their neighbor, Frank Dillon, pretending to be the Lonely One to tease them.
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The three women visit the drugstore to buy candy for the movie. The druggist who serves them tells Lavinia that when she’d been in earlier that afternoon, a man asked who she was. The druggist explains that he told the man who Lavinia is and where she lives. Francine is outraged that the druggist would give this information to a stranger, and the druggist, chagrined, gives Lavinia the candy she wants for free. Helen wants to go home, worried that the stranger might be the Lonely One, but Lavinia isn’t concerned. In fact, she feels a “prickle of excitement at her throat.”
The women enter the theater to see a Charlie Chaplin movie. Before the movie begins, the manager of the theater explains that they will close early out of precaution, given the most recent killing. He warns everyone to leave right after the film ends. When the movie starts, Helen whispers to Lavinia that a stranger followed them into the theater and sat down behind them. Afraid that it’s the Lonely One, Helen interrupts the screening to get the manager. It ends up being the manager’s brother, visiting from out of town, and the other patrons laugh at Helen.
Active
Themes
Despite the manager’s warning to go home right after the show, the women return to the drugstore. Lavinia reasons that the Lonely One “is a million miles away now” and “won’t be back for weeks.” After they finish their sodas, they head out into the night. They pass lit store windows, including one with wax mannequins that stare with lifeless eyes. Townspeople standing at their windows watch the three women as they walk. The lights in the town’s homes start shutting off one by one, and Lavinia imagines everyone else inside, “safe and together.”
When they arrive at Francine’s house, Francine begs Lavinia and Helen to stay with her overnight. When Lavinia refuses, Francine begins to cry, telling her, “I don’t want you dead.” She calms down when Lavinia promises to call her once she gets home. After saying goodbye, Francine closes her front door and locks the bolt. As Lavinia and Helen walk toward Helen’s house, the town clock strikes midnight, and Helen says it makes her feel strange to be out on the streets when everyone else is indoors. When they arrive at Helen’s, Helen asks her to stay, and when Lavinia refuses, Helen says, “Sometimes I think people want to die.” They part ways.
Lavinia continues on alone. She hears a man singing and gets nervous, but it turns out it’s only Officer Kennedy on his patrol. He offers to accompany her through the ravine, but she refuses. He tells her to call out if she needs help, and she makes her way to the edge of the ravine. As she begins descending the stairs that lead to the bridge, she remembers a ghost story from her childhood about a man entering your house and finding you in bed. The memory makes her nervous, and when she thinks she sees a man at the bottom of the steps on the bridge, she screams.
Lavinia listens carefully, but she can’t hear anything. She chastises herself for allowing a “silly story” to scare her. She continues on her way, but then she thinks she hears footsteps behind her. When she stops, the footsteps stop, too. Now truly afraid and certain she is being followed, she begins to run. As she does, she hears imaginary music, as if she is a character in a movie during a dramatic scene. She runs across the bridge and up the other side of the ravine, making silent promises to herself: “if I get home safe I’ll never go out alone.”
Lavinia makes it out of the ravine and onto her street. Her thoughts race as she runs to her door, and she prays that she will make it safely inside. She gets her key and fumbles with the lock, terrified the person following her will catch up. But she makes it inside, and when she peers out the window, she sees that no one is there. She has imagined the sound of the footsteps. She begins to tease herself for being paranoid, but just as she reaches for the light switch, she hears a man in her living room clearing his throat.
