The Last House on Needless Street

One of Mrs. Bannerman’s prized possessions is a Russian nesting doll, a small hollow figurine that houses progressively smaller versions of itself within, until the smallest figurine, which holds nothing. The nesting doll rests atop the mantlepiece in Ted’s house, along with the silver picture frame and the broken music box with the ballerina figurine. Olivia has a particular dislike for the figurine: For her, it represents being trapped by the influence of others. In a sense, she is correct. On one level, the doll represents Mrs. Bannerman’s cruel and suffocating influence on Ted’s (and his other identities’) life. The doll is also an early indicator that something is “wrong” with Ted’s perception of reality. In one scene, he smashes it into tiny pieces, yet it appears whole and repaired later on: “Mommy kept the music box but she put the dolls in the trash and they are gone forever; another part of her I can never get back, another thing I broke that cannot be mended” (174). In the real house on Needless Street, the doll has long since been destroyed. However, in Ted’s mental version of the house, which he constructed to protect himself from his mother’s abuse, it exists to be broken over and over again.