Absence, Silence, and Denial Theme Analysis

Throughout the book, Rosemary returns to the theme of what is missing—what is left unsaid, what is repressed, and who is gone. She opens the book by admitting that it will surprise people who know her now to learn that she was a very talkative child, thereby conveying that she is now unusually silent. Another of the first things we learn about Rosemary is that her brother and sister are both gone (though at first it is a mystery why they have disappeared). In this sense, Rosemary is haunted by the absence not only of certain figures, but also by the absence of thoughts, memories, and language. This creates the impression that she is an intensely isolated person.

Indeed, Rosemary frequently emphasizes that as a child she did not have any friends, and that socializing with others remained a struggle when she arrived at college. It becomes clear that Rosemary’s social isolation is rooted in her relationship with Fern. The fact that Rosemary was raised alongside a chimpanzee permanently alienates her from the human peers with whom she is supposed to identify. This is made especially obvious when Rosemary attempts to befriend a boy in her elementary school, Dae-jung. Dae-jung has recently immigrated from Korea and doesn’t yet speak English; Rosemary pretends they are friends and speaks at him so incessantly that his English rapidly improves, enabling him to make real connections with others and abandon Rosemary. Clearly, Rosemary was originally attracted to Dae-jung because of a warped sense of his similarity to Fern. Like Fern, Dae-jung initially did not speak English; however, Rosemary is quickly reminded that Fern and Dae-jung are in reality not similar when Dae-jung learns to speak English and immediately rejects her.

Indeed, Rosemary emphasizes her own distrust of human language throughout the book. She reflects that “language is such an imprecise vehicle I sometimes wonder why we even bother with it.” At another point, she muses that “sometimes you best avoid talking by being quiet, but sometimes you best avoid talking by talking.” There is evidently something about “talking” and language that Rosemary finds unsettling, no doubt a product of the fact that her closest relationship as a child involved no spoken language at all.

It is not just Rosemary, however, who is fixated on silence and absence. Early in the novel, she notes that her family agrees not to discuss certain subjects, such as her mother’s nervous breakdown, her own arrest, or her cousin Peter’s poor SAT scores. Rosemary also notes that the family agrees not to discuss “the past” in general. Of course, such an agreement highlights a strong sense of collective repression and denial. This denial theoretically enables Rosemary’s family to keep up the pretence of normalcy and happiness despite having suffered major traumas (including the absence of Fern and Lowell).

However, it becomes obvious that silence and absence do not necessarily conceal trauma, but in fact can sometimes amplify it. Rosemary writes that Fern’s “disappearance represented many things—confusions, insecurities, betrayals, a Gordian knot of interpersonal complications.” Meanwhile, Rosemary’s efforts “never to think of Fern again” come crashing down when she befriends the Fern-like Harlow and when Lowell comes back into her life. In this way, the novel suggests that a person’s (or animal’s) absence can also be a kind of presence, just as silence can be a kind of language, and that as much as we try to deny and repress pain, it will inevitably surface in some form or other.