Hidden Pictures

Teddy’s drawings add an additional piece of metanarrative to the book-within-a-book format of the novel. They symbolize Margit’s need to communicate with her daughter. They also highlight the fragmented nature of non-linear storytelling, which can be particularly satisfying when the puzzle of the story is revealed. The drawings also give a visual depiction of increasing skill, which adds to the intensity of Margit’s influence in the house. She grows better with each drawing because she gets better at controlling the host whose hand she uses.

The evolution of the drawings is narratively effective. They begin as the commonplace doodles of a child but slowly transform into something sinister, hinting at the depths of a mystery that is darker than anything Mallory could have imagined. Caroline takes a different view of the drawings: “These drawings are so unfair! This is her version of what happened. But if you’d seen my side of things? The big picture? You’d understand better” (329). She views them as an indictment of her crimes, and she is correct. Caroline tries to classify the drawings as an academic phenomenon of psychological coping as she tries to blame them on Mallory. She says that the drawings are “a symbolic representation.