50 pages • 1 hour read
The Butcher Game
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Themes
The Line Between Justice and Revenge
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, graphic violence, child abuse, and mental illness.
Justice is an important ideal for Wren, who views it as a responsibility she must strive for professionally and personally. As a forensic pathologist, Wren feels a duty toward the corpses she analyzes—the bodies of people who have met a violent and horrific end and whose murders she works to solve. Wren thus views forensic pathology as the practice of listening to the dead. When she investigates Jeremy’s house alongside Leroux, she feels this weight: “Wren feels as if the ghosts of the house are clawing at her, asking for her to listen” (58). At the same time, knowing how close she came to joining the ghosts lurking in Jeremy’s bayou, Wren also feels motivated to catch Jeremy to make restitution for her own trauma.
Despite her ordeal, Wren has no desire to torment Jeremy to exact vengeance; instead, she is dedicated to making sure that he faces the correct legal consequences for his crimes. However, her commitment to catching Jeremy does often turn into a type of fixation that borders on vigilantism. On leave to recover from her second encounter with Jeremy, Wren struggles to sit back and allow the investigation to proceed without her: She wants to “be able to let go of the reins and allow justice to let her know when it was complete” (71), but keeping her distance from the Butcher case only increases her anxiety. She cannot heal passively: Justice is not something that happens to Wren; it is something that Wren must actively work to achieve, even if it puts her in harm’s way. Several times in the novel, when Wren’s eagerness is rash enough to be dangerous, Leroux must pull her back out of caution for her safety.
While Wren thus straddles the line between justice and vengeance, Jeremy embodies the antithesis of justice. Motivated by the desire for revenge against Wren for her escape years ago, Jeremy harms many innocent people specifically to cause Wren emotional harm—an effect heightened by the gruesome messages he leaves on his victims, like the image of Wren’s bracelet that he carves onto the wrist of one. While Jeremy seeks revenge to prolong what he sees as a mystical connection to Wren, Wren instead diligently seeks justice and closure.
The Psychological Effects of Trauma
Trauma plays a key role in the Dr. Wren Muller series and is especially highlighted in The Butcher Game. As Wren investigates Jeremy’s murders, she cannot help remembering his escape at the end of the first novel in the series, The Butcher and the Wren. This in turn reopens even older psychic wounds: Wren has never fully recovered from Jeremy’s initial kidnapping and torture of her from years prior. Wren’s highly structured life, her paranoia and anxiety, and her difficulties sleeping are symptoms of trauma-based conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder.
Wren does her best to manage her psychological state after encountering Jeremy again. On leave from work to give her emotional space from the ongoing investigation, Wren does her best to heal through therapy, which was helpful when she first transformed herself from Jeremy’s victim, Emily, into forensic pathologist Wren: “Wren was born out of years of work and perseverance to become whole again, so she knows there is a lot to gain from therapy. Now she just wants to be Wren again” (19). However, Wren finds a lot of purpose, identity, and self-worth in her role as a forensic investigator. Finding justice for Jeremy’s victims is important to Wren, so her inability to participate in the investigation counters whatever progress she makes in therapy. She wants instead to process her trauma actively by helping find and lock up Jeremy for good.
Wren’s return to the investigation comes with its own difficulties, however. When Wren returns to Jeremy’s house, she has a panic response because of her earlier experiences: “It was just something about that familiar air and that suffocating space. It was as if suddenly she had strings attached to a mad puppeteer. She lost all control” (79). Wren is used to being in control of herself and her surroundings, but being in the bayou where she faced Jeremy twice overwhelms her, reminding her of the pain she endured. In the end, Wren’s maladaptive solution is to repress her feelings for the sake of the investigation, but the novel ends with her realization that even behind bars, Jeremy is still not out of her life.
Power and Obsession
Jeremy’s obsession with Wren and the pleasure he takes in having power over his victims characterize him as a sadistic murderer without any redemptive features. Jeremy’s interest in violence combines his mother’s abuse and his father’s passion for hunting. Consequently, he doesn’t simply kill his victims but prefers to terrorize them first by staging hunting games, the better to enjoy their suffering. The violence he inflicts soothes him, transforming control over others into a way to manage his own trauma. For example, when he murdered Morgan Davies after Philip hit her with his car, Jeremy tuned out Philip’s screams and “heard nothing. It was as if he were in a womb, silent and warm” (216). Jeremy likens killing an innocent woman to being in maternal safety and comfort—something he never actually experienced and thus must recreate. The more he kills, the more Jeremy becomes obsessed with the aesthetics of murder; for example, he loves listening to the death rattle of his victims, which he calls “that delicate place between life and death” (90). He felt powerless in childhood, and now he feels powerful controlling his victims’ last moments.
Jeremy also has a more specific obsession with Wren. When she escaped from him, thwarting his power over her, Jeremy became increasingly convinced that the two share some kind of mystical connection. In the series, he attempts to reclaim control over Wren via a complex cat-and-mouse game in The Butcher and the Wren and by luring Wren to Massachusetts and murdering Richard in The Butcher Game. Jeremy derives pleasure from anticipating Wren’s emotional pain, but he fixates on his preparations so much that he fails to see their flaws: “Why did he think he could share this experience with Philip, with anyone? […] His brain shuffles through the various points of weakness in this plan” (312). While obsessed with building his power over Wren’s thoughts and psychological state, Jeremy fails to see Philip’s real nature and motives. Though he kills Richard and hurts Wren, Wren again survives, and Jeremy is put away for good.
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