Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Woman in Cabin 10, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Entrapment and Isolation
Perception vs. Reality
Trauma, Mental Illness, and Resilience
Ambition and Compassion
Wealth and Power
Summary
Analysis
Lo wakes up trapped, in a small, stifling room. She thinks back on what’s happened. As she’d sat on the sofa in her cabin, waiting for dawn, she’d suddenly heard three taps, followed by a louder tap, on her cabin door. When she peered through the door’s peephole, Lo was stunned to see the woman from Cabin 10 standing there, “like nothing had ever happened.”
Lo is trapped—the state she’s most feared finding herself in again. The pattern of knocks on her cabin door is the same one she’d used when she knocked on the door of Cabin 10 the day before. Out of nowhere, the missing girl is back.
Themes
As the woman from Cabin 10 begins to walk down the corridor away from her, Lo runs out of her room in pursuit. Just as the girl disappears through the staff door, Lo squeezes in behind her. It’s dark inside, and just then, someone grabs her hair, twists her arm behind her, and slams Lo’s head against the door, causing her to lose consciousness.
After the past day’s dead-end search, Lo can’t let the woman get away; her instinctive pursuit shows her determination and courage in following a lead. However, it’s a trap.
Themes
When Lo returns to consciousness, she’s lying on a bunk in a locked, windowless room, with a terrible headache. Determining there’s no way out of the room, she forces herself to stay calm and logical. She doesn’t know what day it is, but she assumes it’s Tuesday, meaning that the Aurora has probably already stopped in Trondheim and returned. Lo clings to the hope that someone noticed she never left the boat. She fears this room will become her tomb.
Faced with her worst nightmare, Lo manages to keep herself from panicking and look at her situation rationally. Her biggest fear at this point is that people will assume she left the cruise in Trondheim, meaning no one will look for her onboard.
Themes
