Knives symbolize guilt, shame, and personal accountability. A character’s relation to knives shows where they are in their journey to overcome their demons. David Ware, the Osborne Slayer, targets ambitious peers who have the drive and privilege to escape their boring, rural hometown of Osborne, Nebraska. He uses his knife to express and externalize his inner resentment toward more fortunate, fulfilled, and driven teens like Matt Butler, the football star, or Katie Kurtzman, the student council president, whose skills have given them a ticket out of Osborne. David lashes out at others and punishes them for their successes instead of reflecting inwardly on the personal flaws contributing to his feeling stuck and miserable. His knife symbolizes his inability to do the inner work required to improve one’s situation and move beyond one’s demons.
Makani’s associations with knives mirror her journey to move beyond the demons of her past and reclaim her life. Knives remind Makani of a cruel hazing ritual that took place back in Hawaii. In a drunken rage, Makani attacked her best friend Jasmine, cutting off Jasmine’s hair with a knife and leaving her to drown in the ocean. The police ultimately charged Makani with assault, and all of Makani’s friends turned on her. For much of the novel, Makani’s past haunts her present. She’s terrified that her new friends will discover what she did to Jasmine and abandon her as her old friends did. She also thinks her past makes her incapable of change or redemption. When Chris, Ollie’s police officer brother, innocently questions Makani about her experience with knives during the police investigation into the Osborne slayings, she freaks out—she immediately assumes that Chris (and Ollie) have found out about her past and will judge her for it. Once Makani learns to forgive herself for her past mistakes, she reclaims her life and moves beyond her shame and guilt. Correspondingly, her associations with knives also change. At the end of the novel, when Makani uses a knife to kill David, she does so to avenge her murdered peers and prevent David from committing future acts of violence. She uses a knife for good instead of evil, showing the reader—and Makani herself—that she can move beyond her troubled past and choose to be the good person she longs to be.
Knives Quotes in There’s Someone Inside Your House
It had been so long since Makani had felt any amount of genuine, unadulterated happiness that she’d forgotten that sometimes it could hurt as much as sadness. His declaration pierced through the muscle of her heart like a skillfully thrown knife. It was the kind of pain that made her feel alive.
David didn’t know her, but Makani knew herself. And neither of them was a monster. She was a human who had made a terrible mistake. He was a human who had planned his terrible actions.
Knives Symbol Timeline in There’s Someone Inside Your House
