The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Secrecy plays a large part in the plot trajectory of the novel, as it creates tension between the characters. There are many instances of secrecy within the novel, including the most obvious secret: David’s abandonment of Phoebe and his subsequent lies to his family. David’s secrecy allows him to recast himself as a kind of martyr for his family:

He’d come to think of it as a kind penance. It was self-destructive, he could see that, but that was the way things were. People smoked, they jumped out of airplanes, they drank too much and got into their cars and drove without seatbelts. For him, there was this secret (322).

However, this martyrdom is ultimately selfish, as it only references the destruction of himself. David fails to consider the feelings of Norah and Paul regarding this secret, preferring instead to suffer by himself. This desire for secrecy has ramifications that David cannot foresee and eventually leads to the dissolution of his family.

In contrast, Norah’s infidelity is a secret that is shared by all of the members of her family, although David refuses to openly acknowledge it in the same way that Paul references it when he finds his mother’s clothes on the beach:

He shook his head and that was that, the secret, his secret, hers and now his, between them like a veil. His father had secrets too, a life that happened at work or in the darkroom, and Paul had figured it was all normal, just the way families were, until he started hanging out with Duke (207).

Although David’s secret distances himself from the members of his family, Norah’s infidelity connects Paul to his mother, perhaps because she is not nearly as concerned with secrecy as David is. Throughout the novel, secrecy bonds Norah and Paul while isolating David, all as a result of David’s main secret. Even when David tries to use secrecy to connect with his son, his attempt to bridge the distance his secrecy has created is ultimately futile as the damage has already occurred. The connection between Norah and Paul that arises as a result of secrecy then only compounds David’s isolation, preventing him from emotionally connecting with his family.

From the outset of the novel, silence is associated with the twins’ birth, as the snow creates a blanket around the town which stifles the environmental noise. Similarly, the office room in which Norah delivers the twins is also silent:

Later, when [David] considered this night [...] what he remembered was the silence in the room and the snow falling steadily outside. The silence was so deep and encompassing that he felt himself floating to a new height, some point above this room and then beyond (17).

From their very birth, Phoebe and Paul are associated with silence. They are brought into a silent world in which Norah and David are not speaking to each other. Of course, silence becomes the method by which David understands Phoebe, as he refuses to talk about her, essentially stretching the silence that existed the night of her birth into her life. Because Paul is inextricably linked to his fraternal twin, his life therefore becomes filled with silence. However, Paul reacts against this silence, using his music as a way to counteract his familial silence. This silence is related to Phoebe, and therefore, to her apparent loss, as Norah and David can never seem to find the words to say to each other. Much of the silence within the Henry household revolves around thoughts left unsaid; the words and emotions left unspoken create distance and tension between David and Norah. The silence that begins the night of the twins’ birth increases throughout the novel until David’s death, when both Paul and Norah regret all the things they never said to David. However, David represents the impetus behind the void of communication, as his decision to abandon Phoebe is ultimately what leaves the rest of his family in silence.

As an orthopedic surgeon, David is linked to bones. He uses bones in order to understand the world around him, believing that they serve as a connection between himself and other people. Instead of the mystery of emotions, David finds bones to be something about other people that he can easily understand: “He liked that bones were solid things, surviving even the white heat of cremation. Bones would last; it was very easy for him to put his faith in something so solid and predictable” (8). Instead of the ephemeral nature of people’s personalities and emotions, David looks to bones in order to connect to other people.

He also specifically turns to his knowledge of the skeletal structure in order to help people, which reinforces his notion of himself as a kind of savior. Bones are things that can be easily understood; they are things that are more or less the same from person to person. David understands how to mend broken bones in a way that he does not understand how to mend, say, Norah’s broken heart over the loss of her daughter. Similarly, David appreciates that bones survive; they are more durable than the fire of cremation, for example. In this way, it seems as though David relates people to their bones, as though he believes that their souls continue on—perhaps even after death—via their bones. However, the nature of bones is further complicated by the fact that they are internal; it is only once the body has given way that they can be seen. In this way, bones also represent secrecy, aspects of a person that must be uncovered in order to fully understand.